hands, from long practice; and the girl informed me, that her brothers
were able so to send the little blood they had in their bodies to their
brains, and always felt quite cheerful for it, happy, and empowered to
deal with the problems of the universe; as they couldn't on their legs;
but she, poor thing, was forbidden to do the same! And I'm like her. I
care for decorum too much to get the brain to act on Colney's behaviour;
but I see it enraptures him and may be comprehensible to the topsy-
turvy.'

Victor rubbed hands. It was he who filled Colney's bag of satiric spite.
In addition to the downright lunacy of the courting of country society,
by means of the cajolements witnessed this day, a suspicion that Victor
was wearing a false face over the signification--of Jarniman's visit and
meant to deceive the trustful and too-devoted loving woman he seemed
bound to wreck, irritated the best of his nature. He had a resolve to
pass an hour with the couple, and speak and insist on hearing plain words
before the night had ended. But Fenellan took it out of him. Victor's
show of a perfect contentment emulating Pempton's, incited Colney to some
of his cunning rapier-thrusts with his dancing adversary; and the heat
which is planted in us for the composition: of those cool epigrams, will
not allow plain words to follow. Or, handing him over to the police of
the Philistines, you may put it, that a habit of assorting spices will
render an earnest simplicity distasteful. He was invited by Nataly to
come home with them; her wish for his presence, besides personal, was
moved by an intuition, that his counsel might specially benefit them.
He shrugged; he said he had work at his chambers.

'Work!' Victor ejaculated: he never could reach to a right comprehension
of labour, in regard to the very unremunerative occupation of literature.
Colney he did not want, and he let him go, as Nataly noticed, without a