noise! Pray give the dog to Parkin at once."

Lady Kitty only held the struggling animal tighter.

"_Please_, Aunt Lina!--I'm afraid he'll bite! But he'll be quite good
with me."

"Why _did_ you bring him, Kitty? We can't have such a creature at
dinner!" said Lady Grosville, angrily.

Lord Grosville advanced behind his wife.

"How do you do, Kitty? Hadn't you better put down the dog and come and
be introduced to Mr. Rankine, who is to take you in to dinner?"

Lady Kitty shook her fair head, but advanced, still clinging to the dog,
gave a smile and a nod to Ashe, and a bow to the young Tory member
presented to her.

"You don't mind him?" she said, a flash of laughter in her dark eyes.
"We'll manage him between us, won't we?"

The young man, dazzled by her prettiness and her strangeness, murmured a
hopeful assent. Lord Grosville, with the air of a man determined on
dinner though the skies fall, offered his arm to Lady Edith Manley, the
wife of the cabinet minister, and made for the dining-room. The stream
of guests followed; when suddenly the puppy, perceiving on the floor a
ball of wool which had rolled out of Lady Grosville's work-table,
escaped in an ecstasy of mischief from his mistress's arm and flew upon
the ball. Kitty rushed after him; the wool first unrolled, then caught;