When you come suddenly face to face with an elephant seated amidst the wreck of cherished Chippendale and ancestral Sevres, it is not calculated to increase your composure or equalise your temper; and Lady Diana may be pardoned, as the vastness of the Consul's impudence dawned upon her, for giving vent to expressions both of anger and amazement, albeit her appearance produced no less of a disturbance in the breast of him who sat amidst the ruins of the breakfast-table. The elephant felt that in the presence of the Maharanee, for such he believed her to be, his position was undignified. She was, without doubt, the wife of the "Damconsul," and, as such, should be paid all proper respect and deference. He, therefore, bowed his head in submission, completing in the process his work of destruction. Whereat Mrs. Allingford shrieked and clung more closely to the protecting shoulders of Hercules. Serious as the situation was, it was not without its humorous side, and it took all Scarsdale's command of himself to control his face sufficiently to address his relative with becoming respect. "Why, aunt," he said, "I didn't know that you had gone in for pets!" "Harold Stanley Malcolm St. Hubart Scarsdale," replied her ladyship--she prided herself on never forgetting a name--"you are one of the most impudent and worthless young men that I have the honour to count among my relatives; but you have been in India, and you ought to know how to manage this monster." "I've seen enough of them," he answered. "What do you want him to do?" "Do!" she cried wrathfully. "I should think anybody would know that I wished it to get up and go away." "Oh," said he, and made a remark in Hindustani to the elephant, whereat the beast gradually and deliberately proceeded to rise from the wreck of the breakfast, till he seemed to the spectators to be forty feet high. Then, in response to Scarsdale's cries of "Mail! mail!" (Go on) he turned himself about, and, after sending the teapot through the nearest window with a disdainful kick of one hind leg, he lurched down the steps of the terrace and on to the lawn, where he remained contentedly standing, gently rocking to and fro, while he meditatively removed from his person, by means of his trunk, the fragments of the feast, with which he was liberally bespattered. Scarsdale, seeing that his lordship was in an amicable frame of mind, hastened to assist Mrs. Allingford to descend from her somewhat uneasy perch. "St. Hubart," said Lady Melton, who, throughout this trying ordeal, had lost none of her natural dignity, "you have done me a service. I shall not forget it." Scarsdale thought it would be difficult to forget the elephant. "I will even forgive you," she continued, "for marrying that American." "It was so good of you to receive my wife," he said. "I trust you are pleased with her." "I am not pleased at all," she said sharply. "I consider her forward and disrespectful, and I am glad she is gone."