He thanked heaven to his wife often, that he had nothing to do with North American or South American mines and pastures or with South Africa and, gold and diamonds:  and a wife must sometimes listen, mastering her inward comparisons.  Dr. Schlesien had met and meditated on this example of the island energy.  Mr. Inchling was not permitted by his wife to be much the guest of the Radnor household, because of the frequent meeting there with Colney Durance; Colney’s humour for satire being instantly in bristle at sight of his representative of English City merchants:  ‘over whom,’ as he wrote of the venerable body, ’the disciplined and instructed Germans not deviously march; whom acute and adventurous Americans, with half a cock of the eye in passing, compassionately outstrip.’  He and Dr. Schlesien agreed upon Mr. Inchling.  Meantime the latter gentleman did his part at the tables of the wealthier City Companies, and retained his appearance of health; he was beginning to think, upon a calculation of the increased treasures of those Companies and the country, that we, the Taxpayer, ought not to leave it altogether to Providence to defend them; notwithstanding the watchful care of us hitherto shown by our briny Providence, to save us from anxiety and expense.  But there are, he said, ‘difficulties’; and the very word could stop him, as commonly when our difficulty lies in the exercise of thinking.

Victor’s African room, containing large wall-maps of auriferous regions, was inspected; and another, where clerks were busy over miscellaneous Continents.  Dudley Sowerby hoped he might win the maiden.

He and Victor walked in company Westward.  The shop of Boyle and Luckwort, chemists, was not passed on this occasion.  Dudley grieved that he had to be absent from the next Concert for practise, owing to his engagement to his mother to go down to the family seat near Tunbridge Wells.  Victor mentioned his relatives, the Duvidney maiden ladies, residing near the Wells.  They measured the distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge, the two houses, as for half an hour on horseback.

Nesta told her father at home that the pair of them had been observed confidentially arm in arm, and conversing so profoundly.

‘Who, do you think, was the topic?’ Victor asked.

She would not chase the little blue butterfly of a guess.

CHAPTER XIX

Treats of nature and circumstance and the dissension between them and of
A satirist’s malignity in the direction of his country