“I should rather think so, my darling,” replied Mr. Sagittarius, with an air of profound and sinister information. The Prophet’s blood ran cold in his veins. Yet he felt for the moment unable to utter a syllable, or even to make a gesture of protest. So entirely detached from him did the worthy couple appear to be, so completely wrapped up in their own evidently well-considered and carefully-laid plans, that he had a sense of being in another sphere, not theirs, of hearing their remarks from some distance off. Madame Sagittarius now turned towards him in a formal manner, and continued. “And now, Mr. Vivian, I shall have to lay down the procedure that you will follow. Have you a good memory--no, a pencil and notebook will be best. _Litterae scriptus manetur_, as we all know full well. Have you a pencil and--?” The Prophet nodded mechanically. “Will you kindly get them?” The Prophet rose, walked to his writing table and felt for the implements. “If you will sit down now I will direct you,” continued Madame, authoritatively. The Prophet sat down at the table, holding a lead pencil upside down in one hand and an account-book wrong side up in the other. “Let’s see--what’s to-day?” inquired Madame, of her husband. “The seventeenth, my dear,” replied Mr. Sagittarius, looking at his wife with almost sickly adoration. “To be sure. Capricornus’s day for Homer’s Idyl. Very well, Mr. Vivian, to-day being the seventeenth, and the old lady’s birthday the twentieth, you have three days, or rather nights, of steady work before you.” “Steady work?” murmured the Prophet. “What should be his hours, Jupiter?” continued Madame. “At what time of night is he to commence? Shall I say nine?” The Prophet remembered feebly that, during the next three nights, he had two important dinner-engagements, a party at the Russian Ambassador’s, and a reception at the Lord Chancellor’s just opposite. However, he made no remark. Somehow he felt that words were useless when confronted with such an iron will as that of the lady in the pelisse. “Nine would be too early, my dear,” said Mr. Sagittarius. “Eleven p.m. would be more to the purpose.” “Eleven let it be then, punctually. Will you dot down, Mr. Vivian, that you have to be at the telescope to take observations at eleven p.m. every night from now till the twentieth.” “But I have had the telesc--” “Kindly dot it down.” The Prophet dotted it down with the wrong end of the pencil on the wrong side of the account-book. “And what are his hours to be exactly, Jupiter?” continued Madame. “From eleven till dawn, I suppose?” The Prophet shuddered. “Eleven till three will be sufficient, my love. The crab, you know, has pretty well done his London work by that time. And the old lady will have to depend very much on the crab for these few nights.”