“Is your ladyship to make one of the party at the Zoological Gardens to-night?”

Lady Julia, who now began to suppose that Mr. Sagittarius’s crazy passion for animals was shared by his wife, gasped and answered,—­

“Are you going to the Zoological Gardens?”

“Yes, to an assembly.  It should be very pleasant.  Do you make one?”

“I regret that I am not invited,” said Lady Julia, rather stiffly.

Madame bridled, under the impression that she was scoring off a member of the aristocracy.

“Indeed,” she remarked, with a click.  “Yet I presume that your ladyship is not insensible to the charms of rout and collation?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Lady Julia, beginning to look like an image made of cast iron.

“I imagine that the social whirl finds in your ladyship a willing acolyte?”

“Oh, no.  I go out very little.”

“Indeed,” said Madame, with some contempt.  “Then you do not frequent the Palace?”

“The Palace!  Do you mean the Crystal Palace?”

“Of Buckingham?  You are not an amicas curiae?”

“I fear I don’t catch your meaning.”

“Does not your ladyship comprehend the Latin tongue?”

“Certainly not,” said Lady Julia, who was born in an age when it was considered highly improper for a young female to have any dealings with the ancients.  “Certainly not.”

“Dear me!” said Madame, with pitying amazement.  “You hear her ladyship, Jupiter?”

“I do, my angel.  Madame is a lady of deep education, ma’am,” said Mr. Sagittarius, turning to Mrs. Merillia, who had been listening to the foregoing cross-examination with perpetually-increasing horror.

“No decent female should understand Greek or Latin,” roared Sir Tiglath at this point.  “If she does she’s sure to read a great deal that she’s no business to know anything about.”

At this challenge Madame’s bulging brow was overcast with a red cloud.

“I beg to disagree, sir,” she exclaimed.  “In my opinion the Georgics of Horatius, Homer’s Idyls and the satires of the great Juvenile—­”

“The great what?” bellowed Sir Tiglath.

“The great Juvenile, sir.”

“There never was a great juvenile, ma’am.  Talent must be mellow before it is worth tasting, whatever the modern whipper-snapper may say.  There never was, and there never will be, a great juvenile—­there can only be a juvenile preparing to be great.”

“Really, sir.”

“I affirm it, madam.  And as you seem so mighty fond of Latin, remember what Horace says—­Qui cupit opatam cursu contingere metam, Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.  Oh-h-h-h!”

And Sir Tiglath flung himself back in his chair, puffing out his enormous cheeks and wagging his gigantic head at Madame who, for once in her life, seemed entirely at a loss, and unable to call to her assistance a single shred of learning from the library of Dr. Carter.