‘That don’t keep a house upright,’ returned Benjamin.

Mr. Fenellan murmured to himself:  ’True enough, it ’s elegy—­though we perform it through a trumpet; and there’s not a doubt of our being down or having knocked the world down, if we’re loudly praised.’

Benjamin waited to hear approval sounded on the lips uncertain as a woman is a wine of ticklish age.  The gentlemen nodded, and he retired.

A second bottle, just as good as the first, should, one thoughtlessly supposes, procure us a similar reposeful and excursive enjoyment, as of men lying on their backs and flying imagination like a kite.  The effect was quite other.  Mr. Radnor drank hastily and spoke with heat:  ’You told me All? tell me that!’

Mr. Fenellan gathered himself together; he sipped, and relaxed his bracing.  But there really was a bit more to tell:  not much, was it?  Not likely to puff a gale on the voluptuous indolence of a man drawn along by Nereids over sunny sea-waves to behold the birth of the Foam-Goddess?  ’According to Carling, her lawyer; that is, he hints she meditates a blow.’

‘Mrs. Burman means to strike a blow?’

‘The lady.’

’Does he think I fear any—­does he mean a blow with a weapon?  Is it a legal . . . ?  At last?  Fenellan!’

‘So I fancied I understood.’

’But can the good woman dream of that as a blow to strike and hurt, for a punishment?—­that’s her one aim.’

‘She may have her hallucinations.’

’But a blow—­what a word for it!  But it’s life to us life!  It’s the blow we’ve prayed for.  Why, you know it!  Let her strike, we bless her.  We’ve never had an ill feeling to the woman; utterly the contrary—­pity, pity, pity!  Let her do that, we’re at her feet, my Nataly and I. If you knew what my poor girl suffers!  She ’s a saint at the stake.  Chiefly on behalf of her family.  Fenellan, you may have a sort of guess at my fortune:  I’ll own to luck; I put in a claim to courage and calculation.’

‘You’ve been a bulwark to your friends.’

’All, Fenellan, all-stocks, shares, mines, companies, industries at home and—­abroad—­all, at a sweep, to have the woman strike that blow!  Cheerfully would I begin to build a fortune over again—­singing!  Ha! the woman has threatened it before.  It’s probably feline play with us.’

His chin took support, he frowned.

‘You may have touched her.’

’She won’t be touched, and she won’t be driven.  What ’s the secret of her?  I can’t guess, I never could.  She’s a riddle.’

’Riddles with wigs and false teeth have to be taken and shaken for the ardently sought secret to reveal itself,’ said Mr. Fenellan.

His picture, with the skeleton issue of any shaking, smote Mr. Radnor’s eyes, they turned over.  ’Oh!—­her charms!  She had a desperate belief in her beauty.  The woman ’s undoubtedly charitable; she’s not without a mind—­sort of mind:  well, it shows no crack till it’s put to use.  Heart! yes, against me she has plenty of it.  They say she used to be courted; she talked of it:  “my courtiers, Mr. Victor!” There, heaven forgive me, I wouldn’t mock at her to another.’