Lady Enid shot a hasty glance of warning at the Prophet.  Mrs. Merillia intercepted it, and began to form fresh ideas of that young person, whom she had formerly called sensible, but whom she now began to think of as crafty.

“Which avenue is that, Sir Tiglath?” asked the Prophet, with a rather inadequate assumption of innocence.

“The Avenue in which one beholds the perfidy darting into hidden places, young man, in which the defenders of foolish virgins are buffeted and browbeaten by counter-jumpers with craniums as big as the great nebula of Orion.  The avenue named after a crumbled philanthropist, who could walk, sheeted, through the atrocious night could his sacred dust awake to the abominations that are perpetrated under the protection of his shadow.  Let dragons lay it waste like the highways of Babylon.”

He gathered up a crumpet, and blinked at Lady Enid, who was airily sipping her tea with a slightly detached air of calm and maidenly dignity.

“I think Sir Tiglath must be describing Shaftesbury Avenue,” remarked Mrs. Merillia, rather mischievously.

“Oh, really,” stammered the Prophet, “I had no idea that it was such an evil neighbourhood.”

“Where is Shaftesbury Avenue?” asked Lady Enid, gently folding a fragment of thin bread and butter and nibbling it with her pretty mouth.

Sir Tiglath elevated his hands and rolled his eyes.

“Where partridges are to be found in January, oh-h-h-h!” was his very unexpected reply.

The Prophet started violently, and even Lady Enid looked disconcerted for a moment.

“What do you mean, Sir Tiglath?” she said, recovering herself.

She turned to Mrs. Merillia.

“I wonder what he means,” she said.  “He never talks sensibly unless he is in his observatory, or lecturing to the Royal Society on the ‘Regularity of Heavenly Bodies,’ or—­”

“The irregularities of earthly ones,” interposed Sir Tiglath.  “In the accursed avenue—­oh-h-h!”

“I fear, Sir Tiglath, you must be a member of the Vigilance Society,” said Mrs. Merillia.

“Yes.  He looks at the morals of the stars through his telescope,” said Lady Enid.  “By the way—­do you, too?” she added to the Prophet, for the first time observing the instrument in the bow window.

Mrs. Merillia and Sir Tiglath exchanged a glance.  An earnest expression came into the Prophet’s face.

“I confess,” he said, with becoming modesty in the presence of the great master of modern astronomy, “that I do watch the heavens from that window.”

“And for what purpose, young man?” rumbled Sir Tiglath, for the first time dropping his theatrical manner of an old barn-stormer, and speaking like any ordinary fogey, such as you may see at a meeting on behalf of the North Pole, or at a dinner of the Odde Volumes.

“For—­for purposes of research, Sir Tiglath,” answered the Prophet, with some diplomacy.