’Only, it’s too bad; it ‘s a breach of hospitality,’ Victor said, both to Nesta and to Nataly, alluding to several instances of Colney’s ironic handling of their guests, especially of this one, whom Nesta would attack, and Nataly would not defend.

They were alive at a signal to protect the others.  Miss Priscilla Graves, an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her ant’alcoholic exclusiveness and scorn:  Mr. Pempton, a drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more transparent purity of vegetarianism.  Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules:  Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human creatures treated as cattle by big doses.  The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily smoked:  Mr. Peridon traced mortal evil to that act.  Dr. Schlesien had his German views, Colney Durance his ironic, Fenellan his fanciful and free-lance.  And here was an optimist, there a pessimist; and the rank Radical, the rigid Conservative, were not wanting.  All of them were pointedly opposed, extraordinarily for so small an assembly:  absurdly, it might be thought:  but these provoked a kind warm smile, with the exclamation:  ’They are dears!’ They were the dearer for their fads and foibles.

Music harmonized them.  Music, strangely, put the spell on Colney Durance, the sayer of bitter things, manufacturer of prickly balls, in the form of Discord’s apples of whom Fenellan remarked, that he took to his music like an angry little boy to his barley-sugar, with a growl and a grunt.  All these diverse friends could meet and mix in Victor’s Concert-room with an easy homely recognition of one another’s musical qualities, at times enthusiastic; and their natural divergencies and occasional clashes added a salient tastiness to the group of whom Nesta could say:  ’Mama, was there ever such a collection of dear good souls with such contrary minds?’ Her mother had the deepest of reasons for loving them, so as not to wish to see the slightest change in their minds, that the accustomed features making her nest of homeliness and real peace might be retained, with the humour of their funny silly antagonisms and the subsequent march in concord; excepting solely as regarded the perverseness of Priscilla Graves in her open contempt of Mr. Pempton’s innocent two or three wine-glasses.  The vegetarian gentleman’s politeness forbore to direct attention to the gobbets of meat Priscilla consumed, though he could express disapproval in general terms; but he entertained sentiments as warlike to the lady’s habit of ‘drinking the blood of animals.’  The mockery of it was, that Priscilla liked Mr. Pempton and admired his violoncello-playing, and he was unreserved in eulogy of her person and her pure soprano tones.  Nataly was a poetic match-maker.  Mr. Peridon was intended for Mademoiselle de Seilles, Nesta’s young French governess; a lady of a courtly bearing, with placid speculation in the eyes she cast on a foreign people, and a voluble muteness shadowing at intervals along the line of her closed lips.