“Oh, this is intolerable,” cried Kitty, “this is past bearing! Bid the messenger wait. Good heavens, do I not hear him riding away?--Call him back, my Lord, call him back! On no account must my Lady Mandeville be permitted to visit me to-morrow.” My Lord stood rooted to the spot, and the veins on his forehead swelled. Kitty rushed to the window and hailed vigorously; the rhythmic footfalls of a horse receding at slow pace along the cobble stones was, on a sudden, altered to the clatter of a returning trot. “Damnation!” cried my Lord. “This passes all!” Mistress Lafone had stopped the wringing of hands and the production of tears, and was all malicious interest. Kilcroney had entered into a towering passion. He protested that it was the most monstrous low thing, that he forbade my Lady to behave so base to her friend. “Tare an’ ’ounds!” cried he, “if it wasn’t ashamed you were, and that, not a minute ago, to be enjoying the finest hospitality in the world, the kindest, the most open-hearted, ’tis not ashamed you should be to return a thrifle of it! Shame!” ejaculated Denis. “Shame! ’tis on the other leg. Gad, ’tis the shameful bit of meanness you’d be practising and ’tis ashamed I am of you meself (that I should live to say it). Your best friend! And all for what? For what if ye please? For the favour of them that never as much as acknowledged your existence. ’Pon me soul, rather than wound the feelings of that angel upon earth, that fair, fond, gentle, noble creature----” My Lord’s voice cracked. “I’d see the whole of Windsor, and Kew to boot, tumble into the Liffey.” Kitty, white under her delicate smears of rouge, sat down at her writing-table with the most sublime air of offended virtue, but the hand that dipped the pen into the ink shook, and there were tears in the voice which presently declared that if ever there was woman here maligned by her own husband, it was my Lady Kilcroney: she who had not liked to disturb her Lord, but who had nevertheless noticed a red spot behind their darling little Denis’s ear that very morning; which spot, as every one who was a mother knew, might very well betoken no less a malady than the measles, which malady, being highly infectious to young children, she, as a mother, now felt it her duty to put off her cherished Lady Mandeville and the adored little Impington to a more auspicious day. “Spot!” interrupted my Lord, with a roar between derision and wrath, and “Spot?” cooed Mistress Lafone, now letting herself go openly to insolence. “My dearest Lady Kilcroney, you are too droll!” There was contempt written on the countenances of the pair so odiously conjoined against Kitty; neither of them being subtle enough to see that my Lady was content with any excuse, so long as it flung a veil of elegance over her set purpose.