creak again.

Tartar seemed to think the visitor's descent effected with unwarranted
_eclat_, and accordingly he growled once more. Malone, however, was no
coward. The spring of the dog had taken him by surprise, but he passed
him now in suppressed fury rather than fear. If a look could have
strangled Tartar, he would have breathed no more. Forgetting politeness
in his sullen rage, Malone pushed into the parlour before Miss Keeldar.
He glanced at Miss Helstone; he could scarcely bring himself to bend to
her. He glared on both the ladies. He looked as if, had either of them
been his wife, he would have made a glorious husband at the moment. In
each hand he seemed as if he would have liked to clutch one and gripe
her to death.

However, Shirley took pity. She ceased to laugh; and Caroline was too
true a lady to smile even at any one under mortification. Tartar was
dismissed; Peter Augustus was soothed--for Shirley had looks and tones
that might soothe a very bull. He had sense to feel that, since he could
not challenge the owner of the dog, he had better be civil. And civil he
tried to be; and his attempts being well received, he grew presently
_very_ civil and quite himself again. He had come, indeed, for the
express purpose of making himself charming and fascinating. Rough
portents had met him on his first admission to Fieldhead; but that
passage got over, charming and fascinating he resolved to be. Like
March, having come in like a lion, he purposed to go out like a lamb.

For the sake of air, as it appeared, or perhaps for that of ready exit
in case of some new emergency arising, he took his seat,--not on the
sofa, where Miss Keeldar offered him enthronization, nor yet near the
fireside, to which Caroline, by a friendly sign, gently invited him, but
on a chair close to the door. Being no longer sullen or furious, he
grew, after his fashion, constrained and embarrassed. He talked to the
ladies by fits and starts, choosing for topics whatever was most
intensely commonplace. He sighed deeply, significantly, at the close of
every sentence; he sighed in each pause; he sighed ere he opened his
mouth. At last, finding it desirable to add ease to his other charms, he
drew forth to aid him an ample silk pocket-handkerchief. This was to be
the graceful toy with which his unoccupied hands were to trifle. He went
to work with a certain energy. He folded the red-and-yellow square
cornerwise; he whipped it open with a waft; again