’Fredi’s Naiad retreat, when she wishes to escape Herr Strauscher or Signor Ruderi,’ said Victor, having his grateful girl warm in an arm; ’and if they head after her into the water, I back her to leave them puffing; she’s a dolphin.  That water has three springs and gets all the drainage of the upland round us.  I chose the place chiefly on account of it and the pines.  I do love pines!’

‘But, excellent man! what do you not love?’ said Lady Grace, with the timely hit upon the obvious, which rings.

‘It saves him from accumulation of tissue,’ said Colney.

‘What does?’ was eagerly asked by the wife of the homoeopathic Dr. John Cormyn, a sentimental lady beset with fears of stoutness.

Victor cried:  ‘Tush; don’t listen to Colney, pray.’

But she heard Colney speak of a positive remedy; more immediately effective than an abjuration of potatoes and sugar.  She was obliged by her malady to listen, although detesting the irreverent ruthless man, who could direct expanding frames, in a serious tone, to love; love everybody, everything; violently and universally love; and so without intermission pay out the fat created by a rapid assimilation of nutriment.  Obeseness is the most sensitive of our ailments:  probably as being aware, that its legitimate appeal to pathos is ever smothered in its pudding-bed of the grotesque.  She was pained, and showed it, and was ashamed of herself for showing it; and that very nearly fetched the tear.

‘Our host is an instance in proof,’ Colney said.  He waved hand at the house.  His meaning was hidden; evidently he wanted victims.  Sight of Lakelands had gripped him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion to sting and tear, on rational grounds.  His face meanwhile, which had points of the handsome, signified a smile asleep, as if beneath a cloth.  Only those who knew him well were aware of the claw-like alertness under the droop of eyelids.

Admiration was the common note, in the various keys.  The station selected for the South-eastward aspect of the dark-red gabled pile on its white shell-terrace, backed by a plantation of tall pines, a mounded and full-plumed company, above the left wing, was admired, in files and in volleys.  Marvellous, effectively miraculous, was the tale of the vow to have the great edifice finished within one year:  and the strike of workmen, and the friendly colloquy with them, the good reasoning, the unanimous return to duty; and the doubling, the trebling of the number of them; and the most glorious of sights—­O the grand old English working with a will! as Englishmen do when they come at last to heat; and they conquer, there is then nothing that they cannot conquer.  So the conqueror said.—­And admirable were the conservatories running three long lines, one from the drawing-room, to a central dome for tropical growths.  And the parterres were admired; also the newly-planted Irish junipers bounding the West-walk; and the three tiers of stately descent from the three green terrace banks to the grassy slopes over the lake.  Again the lake was admired, the house admired.  Admiration was evoked for great orchid-houses ‘over yonder,’ soon to be set up.