Captain Waring sauntered over to Lalla, and remarked, as he glanced significantly at Mrs. Brande, who was motionless as a cloud on a hot summer’s day--a cloud charged with electricity, “When I look round I am inclined to say with the kind-hearted child, when he was shown Doré’s picture, ‘There is one poor lion who has got no Christian!’” “She is by no means so badly off as you imagine,” rejoined Lalla with a demure face. “She has nearly eaten the hostess--does she not look ferocious? Whom shall we throw to her for a fresh victim? She is frightfully angry because she was not taken in to dinner first. Poor creature, she has so very little dignity, that she is always taking the greatest care of it. Hurrah! Hurrah! She is actually going. Oh, I am enormously amused.” Yes, Mrs. Brande had already risen to depart. If not taken in first, she was firmly resolved to take this matter into her own hands, and to be the first to leave. It was in vain that meek Mrs. Loyd pleaded that it was only half-past nine, that every one was looking forward to hearing Miss Gordon play, that she had promised to bring her violin. “Surely, Mrs. Brande, you will not be so cruel as to take her away and disappoint the whole company!” urged Mrs. Loyd pathetically. “I am told that her violin-playing is marvellous.” “The company have seen Miss Gordon’s aunt playing _second fiddle_ all the evening, and _that_ must content them for the present,” retorted Mrs. Brande, who was already in the verandah, robed in a superb long cloak, the very fur of which seemed to catch something of its owner’s spirit, and to bristle up about her ears, as with a sweeping inclination, and beckoning to Honor to follow her, she swept down the steps. All the way home, and as they rolled along side by side, Mrs. Brande gave vent to her wrath, and allowed her injured feelings fair play. “Precedence” was her hobby, her one strong point. A woman might rob her, slander her, even strike her, sooner than walk out of a room before her. She assured her awestruck niece that she would write to “P.” before she slept that night, and unless she received an ample apology, the matter should go _up to the Viceroy_! What was the use of people getting on in the service, and earning rewards by years of hard work in bad climates and deadly jungles, if any one who liked might kick them down the ladder, as _she_ had been kicked that evening! “What,” she angrily continued, with voice pitched half an octave higher, “was the value of these appointments, or was it child’s play, and a new game? It would be a dear game to some people!” She arrived at this conclusion and her own door simultaneously, and flinging off her wrap, and snatching a lamp from a terrified khitmatghar (who saw that the Mem Sahib was “Bahout Kuffa”), she hurried into her husband’s sanctum, and returned with a book. “What was that person’s name, Honor?” she inquired; “did you happen to hear it?--the woman who was taken in first?”