em is almost a renewal, anticipation a revival.
She enraptured Victor with glimpses of the domestic fun she had ceased
to show sign of since the revelation of Lakelands. Her only regret was
on account of the exclusion of Colney Durance from the party, because
of happy memories associating him with the Seine-land, and also that
his bilious criticism of his countrymen was moderated by a trip to the
Continent. Fenellan reported Colney to be 'busy in the act of distilling
one of his Prussic acid essays.' Fenellan would have jumped to go. He
informed Victor, as a probe, that the business of the Life Insurance was
at periods 'fearfully necrological! Inexplicably, he was not invited.
Did it mean, that he was growing dull? He looked inside instead of out,
and lost the clue.

His behaviour on the evening of the departure showed plainly what would
have befallen Mr. Sowerby on the expedition, had not he as well
as Colney been excluded. Two carriages and a cab conveyed the
excursionists, as they merrily called themselves, to the terminus.
They were Victor's guests; they had no trouble, no expense, none of
the nipper reckonings which dog our pleasures; the state of pure bliss.
Fenellan's enviousness drove him at the Rev. Mr. Barmby until the latter
jumped to the seat beside Nesta in her carriage, Mademoiselle de Seilles
and Mr. Sowerby facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the carriage behind,
heard Nesta's laugh; which Mr. Barmby had thought vacuous, beseeming
little girls, that laugh at nothings. She questioned Fenellan.

'Oh,' said he, 'I merely mentioned that the Rev. gentleman carries his
musical instrument at the bottom of his trunk.'

She smiled: 'And who are in the cab?'

'Your fiddles are in the cab, in charge of Peridon and Catkin. Those two
would have writhed like head and tail of a worm, at a division on the
way to the station. Point a finger at Peridon, you run Catkin through
the body. They're a fabulous couple.'

Victor cut him short. 'I deny that those two are absurd.'

'And Catkin's toothache is a galvanic battery upon Peridon.'

Nataly strongly denied it. Peridon and Catkin pertained to their genial
picture of the dear sweet nest in life; a dale never traversed by the
withering breath they dreaded.

Fenellan then, to prove that he could be as bad in his way as Colney,
fell to work on the absent Miss Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton, with
a pitchfork's exaltation of the sacred attachment of the divergently
meri