"You prompted his interest in the holy stars?" continued Sir Tiglath, speaking very loud, and still stopping one ear with his hand. "You drove him to the telescope; you told him to clear the matter up, did you?"

"What matter?" said Mrs. Bridgeman, trying not to look as stupid as she felt, but only with moderate success.

"Say the oxygen, darling," whispered Lady Enid in one of her ears.

"Say the oxygen!" hissed the Prophet into the other.

"The occiput?" said Mrs. Bridgeman, hearing imperfectly. "Oh, yes, Sir Tiglath, I told him,--I told Mr. Biggle--to make quite sure--yes, as to the occiput matter."

The saturnine little clergyman, who was again in motion near by, caught his name and stopped, as Sir Tiglath, roaring against "The Gipsies of Granada," continued,--

"And your original adviser was Mr. Sagittarius, was he?"

On hearing a word she understood, Mrs. Bridgeman brightened up, and, perceiving the little clergyman, she answered,--

"Mr. Sagittarius--ah, yes! Sir Tiglath is speaking of you, Mr.

Sagittarius."

The little clergyman turned almost black in the face.

"Biggle!" he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder. "Biggle! Biggle!"

And, without further parley, he rushed to the cloak-room, seized someone else's hat and coat, and fared forth into the night. Lady Enid, who had meant to coach Mrs. Bridgeman very carefully for the meeting with Sir Tiglath, but whose plans were completely upset by the astronomer's premature advent, now endeavoured to interpose.

"By the way," she said, in a very calm voice, "where is dear Mr.

Sagittarius? I haven't seen him yet."

"I'm afraid he's angry with me," said Mrs. Bridgeman, alluding to the little clergyman. "I really can't think why."

"Sir Tiglath," said Lady Enid, boldly taking the astronomer's arm. "Come with me. I want you to find Mr. Sagittarius for me. Yes, they do make rather a noise!"

This was in allusion to the guitars, for the astronomer had now placed both hands over his ears in the vain endeavour to exclude "The Gipsies."

Deafness, perhaps, rendered him yielding. In any case, he permitted Lady Enid to detach him from Mrs. Bridgeman and to lead him through the rooms in search of Mr. Sagittarius.

"Perhaps he's here," said Lady Enid, entering a darkened chamber. "Oh, no!"

And she hastily moved away, perceiving a large number of devoted adherents of table-tapping busily engaged, with outspread fingers and solemn faces, at their intellectual pursuit. Avoiding the archdeacon, who was now having his nose read by the professor, she conducted the astronomer, rendered strangely meek by the guitars, into a drawing-room near the hall, in which only four people remained--Verano and Mrs.

Eliza Doubleway, who were conferring in one corner, and Mr. and Madame Sagittarius, who were apparently having rather more than a few words together in another.

"Ah! there's Mr. Sagittarius!" said Lady Enid.

"Minnie!" cried Mrs. Eliza, beckoning to Lady Enid. "Minnie, ducky!"

Lady Enid pretended not to hear and tried to hasten with the astronomer towards the Sagittariuses. But Mrs. Eliza was not to be put off.

"Minnie, my pet!" she piped. "Come here, Minnie!"

Lady Enid was obliged to pause.

"What is it, dear Eliza?" she asked, at the same time making a face at the soothsayer to indicate caution.

Mrs. Eliza and Verano rose and approached Lady Enid and the astronomer.

"I was laying the cards last night at Jane Seaman's--you know, dear, the Angel Gabriel who lives on the Hackney Downs--and whatever do you think?

The hace of spades came up three times in conjugation with the Knave of 'earts!"

"Terrific! Very great!" buzzed Verano, with a strong South American Irish brogue--a real broth of a brogue.

"Wonderful!" said Lady Enid, hastily, endeavouring to pa.s.s on.

"Wait a minute, darling. Well, I says to Jane--I was laying the cards for her 'usband, dear--I says to Jane, I says, without doubt Hisaac is about to pa.s.s over, I says, seeing the red boy's come up in conjugation with the hace. 'Lord! Mrs. Eliza! Lay them out again,' she says, 'for,'

she says, 'if Hike is going to pa.s.s over,' she says--"

"Extraordinary, dear Mrs. Eliza! You're a genius!" cried Lady Enid in despair.

"Tremendous! Very big!" buzzed Verano, staring at Sir Tiglath. "You got a very spatulate hand there, sir! Allow me!"

And to Lady Enid's horror he seized the astronomer's hand with both his own.

"How dare you tamper with the old astronomer, sir?" roared Sir Tiglath.

"Am I in a madhouse? Who are all these crazy Janes! Drop my hand, sir!"

Verano obeyed rather hastily, and Lady Enid convoyed the spluttering astronomer towards the corner which contained Mr. and Madame Sagittarius.

Now these worthies were in a mental condition of a most complicated kind. The reception at Zoological House had upset in an hour the theories and beliefs of a lifetime. Hitherto Madame had always been filled with shame at the thought that she was not the wife of an architect but of a prophet, and Mr. Sagittarius had endeavoured to a.s.sume the mein and costume of an outside broker, and had dreamed dreams of retiring eventually from a hated and despised profession. But now they found themselves in a magnificent mansion in which the second-rate members of their own tribe were worshipped and adored, smothered with attentions, plied with Pommery and looked upon as G.o.ds, while they, in their incognito, were neglected, and paid no more heed to than if they had been, in reality, mere architects and outside brokers, totally unconnected with that mysterious occult world which is the fashion of the moment.

This position of affairs had, not unnaturally, thrown then into a condition of the gravest excitement. Madame, more especially, had reached boiling point. Feeling herself, for the first time, an Imperial creature in exile, who had only to declare herself to receive instant homage and to be overwhelmed with the most flattering attentions, her l.u.s.t of glory developed with alarming rapidity, and she urged her husband to cast the traditions that had hitherto guided him to the winds and to declare forthwith his ident.i.ty with Malkiel the Second, the business-like and as it were official head of the whole prophetic tribe.

Mr. Sagittarius, for his part, was also fired with the longing for instant glory, but he was by nature an extremely timid--or shall we say rather, an extremely prudent--man. He remembered the repeated injunctions of his great forebear who had lived and died in the Susan Road beside the gasworks. More, he remembered Sir Tiglath b.u.t.t. He was torn between ambition and terror.

"Declare yourself, Jupiter!" cried Madame. "Declare yourself this moment!"

"My love!" replied Mr. Sagittarius. "My angel, we must reflect."

"I have reflected," retorted Madame.

"There are difficulties, my dear, many difficulties in the way."

"And what if there are? _Per augustum ad augustibus_. Every fool knows that."

"My dear, you are a little hard upon me."

"And what have you been upon me, I should like to know? What about those goings-on with the woman Bridgeman? What about your investigations with that hussy Minerva? You've been her owl, that's what you've been!"

She began to show grave symptoms of hysteria. Mr. Sagittarius patted her hands in great anxiety.

"My love, I have told you, I have sworn--"