They were walking outside the drawing-room windows, on a terrace which was, indeed, the only feature of the Haggart façade which possessed some architectural interest. A low balustrade of terra-cotta, copied from a famous Italian villa, ran round it, broken by large terra-cotta pots now filled with orange-trees. Here and there between the orange-trees were statues transported from Naples in the late eighteenth century by a former Lord Tranmore. There was a Ceres and a Diana, a Vestal Virgin, an Athlete, and an Antinous, now brought into strange companionship under the windows of this ugly English house. Chipped and blackened as they were, and, to begin with, of a mere decorative importance, they still breathed into the English evening a note of Italy or Greece, of things lovely and immortal. The lamps in the sitting-rooms streamed out through the widely opened windows upon the terrace, checkering the marble figures, which now emerged sharply in the light, and now withdrew in the gloom; while at one point they shone plainly upon an empty pedestal before which the Dean and his companion paused. The Dean looked at the inscription. "What a pity! This once held a statue of Hebe holding a torch. It was struck by lightning fifty years ago." "Lady Kitty might stand for her to-night," said Edith Manley. For Kitty, the capricious, had appeared at dinner in a _quasi_-Greek dress, white, soft, and flowing, without an ornament. The Dean acquiesced, but rather sadly. "I wish she had the bloom of Hebe! My dear Lady Edith, our hostess looks _ill_!" "Does she? I can't tell--I admire her so!" said the woman beside him, upon whose charming eyes some fairy had breathed kindness and optimism from her cradle. "_Ouf!_" cried Kitty, as she sprang across the sill of the window behind them. "They're _all_ gone! The Bishop wishes me to become a vice-president of the Women's Diocesan Association. And I've promised three curates to open bazaars. _Ah, mon Dieu!_" She raised her white arms with a wild gesture, and then beckoned to Eddie Helston, who was close beside her. "Shall we try our dance?" The young men of the house, a group of young guardsmen and diplomats, gathered round, laughing and clapping. Kitty's dancing had become famous during the winter as one of her many extravagances. She no longer recited; literature bored her; motion was the only poetry. So she had been carefully instructed by a _danseuse_ from the Opera, and in many points, so the enthusiasts declared, had bettered her instructions. She was now in love with a tempestuous Spanish dance, taught her by a gypsy _señorita_ who had been one of the sensations of the London season. It required a partner, and she had been practising it with young Helston, for several mornings past, in the empty ballroom. Helston had spread its praises abroad; and all Haggart desired to see it.