Kitty glanced down at the scrap of paper, marked with her own delicate caligraphy, in the latest thing in violet inks; then, her hotly-resentful gaze contradicting the ice-cold mockery of her accents: “I marvel, my Lord, that you can find a joke in what is to me so monstrous sad.” “I say it’s a bad joke, a blanked, ill-bred, devilish bit of cattiness!” “Oh, pray, pray!” tittered my Lady on the edge of hysterical fury. “Remember you are not in the bosom of your family, Denis. Here are witnesses----” “Witnesses, is it? I’ve nothing to hide, I’d have it called by the town crier. The letter which a wife was not ashamed to send to her husband may be sung up and down the parade, for all I care! Listen to this, Nan Day: you led your husband a pretty dance once upon a time, but split me, you stopped short of public insult! Listen, Lady Flora. All the world knows what a treasure Dare-Stamer has in you and how ’tis the good humour of the world you have with him, and the patience! Here’s a message for a wife to write to her husband: “_My dear Denis, Her Majesty has most graciously condoned the dreadful Act of Disrespect by which you made an exhibition of yourself and of another person who shall be nameless, at a moment, when the Horrid Spectacle could not fail to meet her August Glance, in so far as not to withdraw her condescending promise to be present at my Ball to-morrow night. She has, nevertheless, given me to understand with Her own incomparable Tact and Kindness that should you find it convenient to be absent on business on that occasion it would considerably add to the harmony of the evening. I am sure I need only convey this expression of her Royal pleasure to you, that you are not so altogether lost to decency and good feeling as not instantly to take steps to meet it. Pray believe me, my Lord, to remain your attached and dutiful Wife----_” Denis’s voice shook and broke with a sound that approached a snarl, on the last words. “What do you think of that? What do you think of it?” he shouted, shaking the letter, first under Lady Flora’s, then under Nan Day’s nose. Both ladies looked scared. “Dear! dear!” said Lady Flora, “I’m sure ’tis vastly disagreeable all round, but--well, there, my good soul, wouldn’t it help matters if you was just to do as the Queen asks? La! she’s so prodigious stiff-backed. And who should know it but me! Didn’t I nearly die of being Lady of the Bedchamber for three mortal months. Oh, I’m too fat and soft for Her Majesty, but sure, it’ll all blow over, and you so good-natured yourself, and so obliging!”