He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let him go, after dealing him a hard pellet or two in a cracker-covering.

There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemerae!  And he who feeds on them, to pay a price for their congratulations and flatteries, he is one of them himself!

Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby.  ’Dear Mr. Durance, where is Captain Dartrey?’

Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through a crowd, for an introduction of him to Captain Dartrey.  That was perceptible.

Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely:  he struck across the path of the Rev. Septimus:  again he had the hollow of her ear at his disposal.

’Mr. Radnor was excellent.  He does everything consummately:  really, we are all sensible of it.  I am.  He must lead us in a symphony.  These light “champagne overtures” of French composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls them, do not bring out his whole ability:—­Zampa, Le Pre aux clercs, Masaniello, and the like.’

‘Your duet together went well.’

‘Thanks to you—­to you.  You kept us together.’

‘Papa was the runaway or strain-the-leash, if there was one.’

’He is impetuous, he is so fervent.  But, Miss Radnor, I could not be the runaway-with you . . . with you at the piano.  Indeed, I . . . shall we stroll down?  I love the lake.’

‘You will hear the bell for your cold dinner very soon.’

’I am not hungry.  I would so much rather talk—­hear you.  But you are hungry?  You have been singing twice:  three times!  Opera singers, they say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout.  And I never heard your voice more effective.  Yours is a voice that . . . something of the feeling one has in hearing cathedral voices:  carry one up.  I remember, in Dresden, once, a Fraulein Kuhnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her accomplishments.  But it was not the same.’

Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.

’Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a milliner’s dumb figure wears the beautiful dress; I must point out my view of some of my merits.’

’Oh! do, I beg, Miss . . .  You have a Christian name and I too:  and once . . . not Mr. Sowerby:  yes, it was Dudley!

‘Quite accidentally, and a world of pardons entreated.’

‘And Dudley begged Dudley might be Dudley always!’

He was deepening to the Barmby intonation—­apparently Cupid’s; but a shade more airily Pagan, not so fearfully clerical.

Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.  Dr. Schlesien was bowing with Dartrey.

’And if Durandarte would only—­but you are one with Miss Graves to depreciate my Durandarte, in favour of the more classical Jachimo; whom we all admire; but you shall be just,’ said she, and she pouted.  She had seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City gentlemen.