Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/235

Rh him. He bit her last week. May he sit on my knee? I know I can keep him quiet!"

Every conversation in the library stopped. Twenty amazed persons turned to look. They beheld a slim girl in white at the far end of the large room struggling with a gray terrier puppy which she held under her arm, and turning appealing eyes towards Lady Grosville. The dog, half frightened, half fierce, was barking furiously. Lady Kitty's voice could hardly be heard through the din, and she was crimson with the effort to control her charge. Her lips laughed; her eyes implored. And to add to the effect of the apparition, a marked strangeness of dress was at once perceived by all the English eyes turned upon her. Lady Kitty was robed in the extreme of French fashion, which at that moment was a fashion of flounces; she was extremely décolletée; and her fair abundant hair, carried to a great height and arranged with a certain calculated wildness around her small face, was surmounted by a large scarlet butterfly which shone defiantly against the dark background of books.

"Kitty!" said Lady Grosville, advancing indignantly, "what a dreadful noise! Pray give the dog to Parkin at once."

Lady Kitty only held the struggling animal tighter.

"Please, Aunt Lina!—I'm afraid he'll bite! But he'll be quite good with me."

"Why did you bring him, Kitty? We can't have such a creature at dinner!" said Lady Grosville, angrily.

Lord Grosville advanced behind his wife.

"How do you do, Kitty? Hadn't you better put down the dog, and come and be introduced to Mr. Rankine, who is to take you in to dinner?"

Lady Kitty shook her fair head, but advanced, still clinging to the dog, gave a smile and a nod to Ashe, and a bow to the young Tory member presented to her.

"You don't mind him ?" she said, a flash of laughter in her dark eyes. "We'll manage him between us, won't we?"

The young man, dazzled by her prettiness and her strangeness, murmured a hopeful assent. Lord Grosville, with the air of a man determined on dinner though the skies fall, offered his arm to Lady Edith Manley, the wife of the cabinet minister, and made for the dining-room. The stream of guests followed; when suddenly the puppy, perceiving on the floor a ball of wool which had rolled out of Lady Grosville's work-table, escaped in an ecstasy of mischief from his mistress's arm and flew upon the ball. Kitty rushed after him. The wool first unrolled, then caught; the table overturned, and all its contents were flung pell-mell in the path of Lady Grosville, who, on the arm of the amused and astonished minister, was waiting in restrained fury till her guests should pass.

"I shall never get over this," said Lady Kitty, as she leaned back in her chair, still panting, and quite incapable of eating any of the foods that were being offered to her in quick succession.

"I don't know that you deserve to," said Ashe, turning a face upon her which was as grave as he could make it. The attention of every one else round the room was also, in truth, occupied with his companion. There was, indeed, a general buzz of conversation and a general pretence that Lady Kitty's proceedings might now be ignored. But in reality every guest, male or female, kept a stealthy watch on the red butterfly and the sparkling face beneath it; and Ashe was well aware of it.

"I vow it was not my fault," said Kitty, with dignity. "I was not allowed to have the dog I should have had. You'd never have found a dog of St. Hubert condescending to bedroom slippers! But as I had to have a dog, and Colonel Warington gave me this one three days ago—and he has already ruined half Maman's things,—and no one could manage him but me. I just had to bring him, and trust to Providence."

"I have been here a good many times," said Ashe, "and I never yet saw a dog in the sanctuary. Do you know that Pitt once wrote a speech in the library?"

"Did he? I'm sure it never made such a stir as Ponto did." Kitty's face suddenly broke into laughter, and she hid it a moment in her hands.

"You brazen it out," said Ashe, "but how are you going to appease Lady Grosville?"