“Extraordinary, dear Mrs. Eliza!  You’re a genius!” cried Lady Enid in despair.

“Tremendous!  Very big!” buzzed Verano, staring at Sir Tiglath.  “You got a very spatulate hand there, sir!  Allow me!”

And to Lady Enid’s horror he seized the astronomer’s hand with both his own.

“How dare you tamper with the old astronomer, sir?” roared Sir Tiglath.  “Am I in a madhouse?  Who are all these crazy Janes!  Drop my hand, sir!”

Verano obeyed rather hastily, and Lady Enid convoyed the spluttering astronomer towards the corner which contained Mr. and Madame Sagittarius.

Now these worthies were in a mental condition of a most complicated kind.  The reception at Zoological House had upset in an hour the theories and beliefs of a lifetime.  Hitherto Madame had always been filled with shame at the thought that she was not the wife of an architect but of a prophet, and Mr. Sagittarius had endeavoured to assume the mein and costume of an outside broker, and had dreamed dreams of retiring eventually from a hated and despised profession.  But now they found themselves in a magnificent mansion in which the second-rate members of their own tribe were worshipped and adored, smothered with attentions, plied with Pommery and looked upon as gods, while they, in their incognito, were neglected, and paid no more heed to than if they had been, in reality, mere architects and outside brokers, totally unconnected with that mysterious occult world which is the fashion of the moment.

This position of affairs had, not unnaturally, thrown then into a condition of the gravest excitement.  Madame, more especially, had reached boiling point.  Feeling herself, for the first time, an Imperial creature in exile, who had only to declare herself to receive instant homage and to be overwhelmed with the most flattering attentions, her lust of glory developed with alarming rapidity, and she urged her husband to cast the traditions that had hitherto guided him to the winds and to declare forthwith his identity with Malkiel the Second, the business-like and as it were official head of the whole prophetic tribe.

Mr. Sagittarius, for his part, was also fired with the longing for instant glory, but he was by nature an extremely timid—­or shall we say rather, an extremely prudent—­man.  He remembered the repeated injunctions of his great forebear who had lived and died in the Susan Road beside the gasworks.  More, he remembered Sir Tiglath Butt.  He was torn between ambition and terror.

“Declare yourself, Jupiter!” cried Madame.  “Declare yourself this moment!”

“My love!” replied Mr. Sagittarius.  “My angel, we must reflect.”

“I have reflected,” retorted Madame.

“There are difficulties, my dear, many difficulties in the way.”

“And what if there are? Per augustum ad augustibus.  Every fool knows that.”

“My dear, you are a little hard upon me.”