this bitter gentleman became when he had the melodious instrument tucked
under his chin. He was a guest for the night. Dressing in the early
hour, Nests saw him from her window on the parade, and soon joined him,
to hear him at his bitterest, in the flush of the brine. 'These lengths
of blank-faced terraces fronting sea!' were the satirist's present black
beast. 'So these moneyed English shoulder to the front place; and that
is the appearance they offer to their commercial God!' He gazed along
the miles of 'English countenance,' drearily laughing. Changeful ocean
seemed to laugh at the spectacle. Some Orphic joke inspired his
exclamation: 'Capital!'

'Come where the shops are,' said Nesta.

'And how many thousand parsons have you here?'

'Ten, I think,' she answered in his vein, and warmed him; leading him
contemplatively to scrutinize her admirers: the Rev. Septimus; Mr.
Sowerby.

'News of our friend of the whimpering flute?'

'Here? no. I have to understand you!'

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the 'regiments of Anglo-Chinese'
represented to him by the moneyed terraces, and said: 'The face of a
stopped watch!--the only meaning it has is past date.'

He had no liking for Dudley Sowerby. But it might have been an allusion
to the general view of the houses. But again, 'the meaning of it past
date,' stuck in her memory. A certain face close on handsome, had a