"I had to go out," Mrs. Neligage responded. "I was sorry not to see you." "There was a horrid dog in the hall that barked at me," Miss Wentstile continued. "You ought not to let your visitors be annoyed so." "It isn't my dog," the widow replied with unusual conciliation in her manner. "It belongs to those Stearnses who have the apartment opposite." "I can't bear other people's dogs," Miss Wentstile declared with superb frankness. "Fido was the only dog I ever loved." "Where is Fido?" asked the widow. "I haven't heard his voice yet." Miss Wentstile drew herself up stiffly. "I have met with a misfortune. I had to send dear Fido away. He would bark at the Count." Whatever the intentions of Mrs. Neligage to conciliate, Providence had not made her capable of resisting a temptation like this. "How interesting the instinct of animals is," she observed with an air of the most perfect ingenuousness. "They seem to know doubtful characters by intuition." "Doubtful characters?" echoed Miss Wentstile sharply. "Didn't Fido always bark at you, Louisa?" "Yes," returned the caller as innocently as ever. "That is an illustration of what I was saying." "Oh, Madame Neleegaze ees so continuously to be _drôle_!" commented the Count, with a display of his excellent teeth. "So she have to marry, ees eet not?" "Do you mean those two sentences to go together, Count?" Alice asked, with a twinkle of fun. He stood apparently trying to recall what he had said, in order to get the full meaning of the question, when the servant announced Mrs. Croydon, who came forward with a clashing of bead fringes and a rustling of stiff silk. She was ornamented, hung, spangled, covered, cased in jet until she might not inappropriately have been set bodily into a relief map to represent Whitby. She advanced halfway across the space to where Miss Wentstile sat near the hearth, and then stopped with a dramatic air. She fixed her eyes on the Count, who, with his feet well apart, stood near Miss Wentstile, stirring his tea, and diffusing abroad a patronizing manner of ownership. "I beg your pardon, Miss Wentstile," Mrs. Croydon said in a voice a little higher than common, "I will come to see you again when you haven't an assassin in your house." There was an instant of utter silence. The remark was one well calculated to produce a sensation, and had Mrs. Croydon been an actress she might at that instant have congratulated herself that she held her audience spellbound. It was but for a flash, however, that Miss Wentstile was paralyzed. "What do you mean?" exclaimed the spinster, recovering the use of her tongue. "I mean," retorted Mrs. Croydon, extending her bugle-dripping arm theatrically, and pointing to the Count, "that man there." "Me!" cried the Count. "The Count?" cried Miss Wentstile an octave higher. "Ah!" murmured Mrs. Neligage very softly, settling herself more comfortably in her chair.