Colney marked him.  His encounters with Fenellan were enlivening engagements and left no malice; only a regret, when the fencing passed his guard, that Fenellan should prefer to flash for the minute.  He would have met a pert defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla Graves, if she had not been occupied with observation of the bearing of Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on behalf of Mrs. Victor; she was besides hostile by race and class to an aristocratic assumption of licence.  Sparing Colney, she with some scorn condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed without a word.  Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian movement was more progressive in England than in other lands, but he was at the disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, that eulogy of his compatriots on this account would win her coldest approval.  ’Satire was never an argument,’ he said, too evasively.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby received the meed of her smile, for saying in his many-fathom bass, with an eye on Victor:  ’At least we may boast of breeding men, who are leaders of men.’

The announcement of luncheon, by Victor’s butler Arlington, opportunely followed and freighted the remark with a happy recognition of that which comes to us from the hands of conquerors.  Dr. Schlesien himself, no antagonist to England, but like Colney Durance, a critic, speculated in view of the spread of pic-nic provision beneath the great glass dome, as to whether it might be, that these English were on another start out of the dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly minds-merchant, in this instance:  and be debated within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from Method; albeit we count for the long run, that Method has assurance of success, however late in the race to set forth.

Luncheon was a merry meal, with Victor and Nataly for host and hostess; Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Lady Grace Halley for the talkers.  A gusty bosom of sleet overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling Westward, became a radiant mountain-land, partly worthy of Victor’s phrase:  ’A range of Swiss Alps in air.’

‘With periwigs Louis Quatorze for peaks,’ Colney added.

And Fenellan improved on him:  ’Or a magnified Bench of Judges at the trial of your caerulean Phryne.’

The strip of white cloud flew on a whirl from the blue, to confirm it.

But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits upon nature.  Violent and horrid interventions of the counterfeit, such mad similes appeared to them, when pure coin was offered.  They loathed the Rev. Septimus Barmby for proclaiming, that he had seen ’Chapters of Hebrew History in the grouping of clouds.’