beside his hostess with a view to
five agreeable minutes. He was the most harmless of social epicures, was
the Dean, and he felt that Lady Kitty had defrauded him at lunch in
favor of that great, ruffling, Byronic fellow Cliffe, who ought to have
better taste than to come lunching with the Ashes.

"Am I?" said Kitty, who had thrown herself into the corner of a sofa,
and sat curled up there in an attitude which the Dean thought charming,
though it would not, he was aware, "have become Mrs. Winston.

"Well, you know best," said the Dean. "But, at any rate, be good and
explain to me what is an Archangel."

"Somebody whom most men and all women dislike," said Kitty, promptly.

"Yet they seem to be numerous," remarked the Dean.

"Not at all!" cried Kitty, with an air of offence; "not at all! If they
were numerous they would, of course, be popular."

"And in fact they are rare--and detested? What other characteristics
have they?"

"Courage," said Kitty, looking up.

"Courage to break rules? I hear they all call one another by their
Christian names, and live in one another's rooms, and borrow one
another's money, and despise conventionalities. I am sorry you are an
Archangel, Lady Kitty."

"I didn't admit that I was," said Kitty, "but if I am, why are you
sorry?"

"Because," said the Dean, smiling, "I thought you were too clever to
despise conventionalities."

Kitty sat up with revived energy, and joined battle. She flew into a
tirade as to the dulness and routine of English life, the stupidity of
good people, and the tyranny of English hypocrisy. The Dean listened
with amusement, then with a shade of something else. At last he got up
to go.

"Well, you know, we have heard all that before. My point of view is so
much more interesting--subtle--romantic! Anybody can attack Mrs. Grundy,
but only a person of originality can adore her. Try it, Lady Kitty. It
would be really worth your while."

Kitty mocked and exclaimed.

"Do you know what that phrase--that name of abomination--always recalls
to me?" pursued the old man.

"It bores me, even to guess," was Kitty's petulant reply.

"Does it? I think of some of the noblest people I have ever known--brave
men--beautiful women--who fought Mrs. Grundy, and perished."

The Dean stood looking down upon her, with an eager, sensitive
expression. Tales that he had heeded very little when he had first
heard them ran through his mind; he had thought Lady Kitty's intimate