to ensue, that he had not done anything.  It disposed him to think a happy passivity more sagacious than a restless activity.  We should let Fortune perform her part at the wheel in working out her ends, should we not?—­for, ten to one, nine times out of ten we are thwarting her if we stretch out a hand.  And with the range of enjoyments possessed by Victor, why this unceasing restlessness?  Why, when we are not near drowning, catch at apparent straws, which may be instruments having sharp edges?  Themison, as Mrs. Burman’s medical man, might tell the lady tales that would irritate her bag of venom.

Rarely though Fenellan was the critic on his friend, the shadow cast over his negligent hedonism by Victor’s boiling pressure, drove him into the seat of judgement.  As a consequence, he was rather a dull table-guest in the presence of Dr. Themison, whom their host had pricked to anticipate high entertainment from him.  He did nothing to bridge the crevasse and warm the glacier air at table when the doctor, anecdotal intentionally to draw him out, related a decorous but pungent story of one fair member of a sweet new sisterhood in agitation against the fixed establishment of our chain-mail marriage-tie.  An anecdote of immediate diversion was wanted, expected:  and Fenellan sat stupidly speculating upon whether the doctor knew of a cupboard locked.  So that Dr. Themison was carried on by Lady Grace Halley’s humourous enthusiasm for the subject to dilate and discuss and specify, all in the irony of a judicial leaning to the side of the single-minded social adventurers, under an assumed accord with his audience; concluding:  ‘So there’s an end of Divorce.’

‘By the trick of multiplication,’ Fenellan, now reassured, was content to say.  And that did not extinguish the cracker of a theme; handled very carefully, as a thing of fire, it need scarce be remarked, three young women being present.

Nataly had eyes on her girl, and was pleased at an alertness shown by Mr. Sowerby to second her by crossing the dialogue.  As regarded her personal feelings, she was hardened, so long as the curtains were about her to keep the world from bending black brows of inquisition upon one of its culprits.  But her anxiety was vigilant to guard her girl from an infusion of any of the dread facts of life not coming through the mother’s lips:  and she was a woman having the feminine mind’s pudency in that direction, which does not consent to the revealing of much.  Here was the mother’s dilemma:  her girl—­Victor’s girl, as she had to think in this instance,—­the most cloudless of the young women of earth, seemed, and might be figured as really, at the falling of a crumb off the table of knowledge, taken by the brain to shoot up to terrific heights of surveyal; and there she rocked; and only her youthful healthiness brought her down to grass and flowers.  She had once or twice received the electrical stimulus, to feel and be as lightning, from a seizure of facts in infinitesimal