The design was manifest. Who should mistake it? For a fencer plays you the acrobat, a measure he, poised on a plum-box with jargon-mouth agape for what shall come to it. Is the man unconscious? The worse his fate. For the fact is this. All are Meredithians in dialogue, tarred with one brush abysmally plunged in the hot and steaming tank, a general tarred, a tarred tutor, a tarred sister, aunt reeking of the tar and General's Doubtful Lady chin-deep in the compound, and no distinction. Clatter, crash, bang. Helter-skelter comes dashing Lady CHARLOTTE, a forest at her heels dragged in chains for all a neighbour may pout and fret and ride to hounds. She switched him a brat-face patter-down of an apology tamed to the net-ponds of a busk-madder, blue nose vermilion, mannish to the outside, breathing flames and scattering apish hop-poles like a parachute blown into space by the bellows of a hugger-mugger conformity. "I can mew," she said. "Old women can; it's a way they have. The person you call ... but no--I pass it. Was ever such folly in a man? And that man my brother ROWSLEY. But you have seen her you say--a Spaniard--_Ay de mi; Señorita_, and the rest of the gibberish. What is her colour?" The question flicked him like a hansom's whip, that plucks you out an optic, policeman in helmet looking on, stolid on the mumchance. Out it goes at whip-end and no remedy, blue, green, brown or bloodshot. Glass can imitate or porcelain, and a pretty trade's a-doing in these, making a man like two light-houses, one fixed as fate, the other revolving like the earth on its axis. "BROWN," he answered, humbly. "MORSFIELD's after her," said Lady CHARLOTTE. "Let him." "But he's dangerous." "I can trounce such. Did it at school, and can remember the trick." A lady came moving onward. She had that in her gait which showed command, her bonnet puckered to the front, a fat aunt trailing behind. They came steadily. It was AMINTA with her aunt. Lord ORMONT, his temper ablaze like his manuscript, thirty-four pages, neither more nor less, fortifications planned, advice given gratis to the loutish neglecting nation, stepped forward. "You must remove her," he declared to WEYBURN. "But the aunt?" questioned MATEY. "She must go too. See to it quickly!" He fell back, the irrevocable quivering in his eyeball, destiny mocking with careless glee, while MORSFIELD and a bully-captain saw their chances and just missed the taking. Away they clattered, MATEY and AMINTA, leaving the PAGNELL to her passion-breathing MORSFIELD. END OF VOL. II. * * * * * THE END OF THE OPERA SEASON. _Solo and Chorus._