er, heightened his part for the edification of the admiring
couple.

'Take heart, Benjamin,' said Mr. Fenellan; 'it's only the bottle dies;
and we are the angels above to receive the spirit.'

'I'm thinking of the house,' Benjamin replied. He told them that again.

'It 's the loss of the fame of having the wine, that he mourns. But,
Benjamin,' said Mr. Fenellan, 'the fame enters into the partakers of it,
and we spread it, and perpetuate it for you.'

'That don't keep a house upright,' returned Benjamin.

Mr. Fenellan murmured to himself: 'True enough, it 's elegy--though we
perform it through a trumpet; and there's not a doubt of our being down
or having knocked the world down, if we're loudly praised.'

Benjamin waited to hear approval sounded on the lips uncertain as a woman
is a wine of ticklish age. The gentlemen nodded, and he retired.

A second bottle, just as good as the first, should, one thoughtlessly
supposes, procure us a similar reposeful and excursive enjoyment, as of
men lying on their backs and flying imagination like a kite. The effect
was quite other. Mr. Radnor drank hastily and spoke with heat: 'You told
me All? tell me that!'

Mr. Fenellan gathered himself together; he sipped, and relaxed his
bracing. But there really was a bit more to tell: not much, was it? Not
likely to puff a gale on the voluptuous indolence of a man drawn along by
Nereids over sunny sea-waves to behold the birth of the Foam-Goddess?
'According to Carling, her lawyer; that is, he hints she meditates a
blow.'

'Mrs. Burman means to strike a blow?'

'The lady.'

'Does he think I fear any--does he mean a blow with a weapon? Is it a
legal . . . ? At last? Fenellan!'

'So I fancied I understood.'

'But can the good woman dream of that as a blow to strike and hurt, for a
punishment?--that's her one aim.'

'She may have her hallucinations.'

'But a blow--what a word for it! But it's life to us life! It's the blow
we've prayed for. Why, you know it! Let her strike, we bless her. We've
never had an ill feeling to the woman; utterly the contrary--pity, pity,
pity! Let her do that, we're at her feet, my Nataly and I. If you knew
what my poor girl suffers! She 's a saint at the stake. Chiefly on behalf
of her family. Fenellan, you may have a sort of guess at my fortune: I'll
own to luck; I put in a claim to courage and calculation.'

'You've been a bulwark to your friends.'

'All, Fenellan, all-stocks, shares, mines, com