"Yes," says Monica, staring at him.

"I mean the poem in which he has so faithfully depicted the way in which
two escaped lunatics would be sure to behave if left to their own
devices. Considered as a warning to us to keep bolts and bars on Colney
Hatch and Hanwell, it may be regarded as a delicate attention. Dear
Tennyson! he certainly is a public benefactor. There is a scene in that
remarkable poem which I think might suit us. You remember where, after
much wild careering in the foreground, the principal idiots decide upon
riding home together, pillion fashion?"

"I--I think so," says Monica, who plainly doesn't, being much confused.

"'Then on his foot she sat her own and climbed,'--and then she threw her
arms round him in a most unmaidenly fashion, if I recollect aright; but
of course mad people _will_ be vehement, poor souls; they can't help it.
Now, supposing we adopted that scene, wouldn't it be effective? One of
Madam O'Connor's big carriage-horses, if brought forward,--I mean the
one that kicked over the traces, yesterday,--would, I firmly believe,
create quite a sensation, and in all probability bring down the house."

"The stage, certainly," says Desmond.

"Ah! you approve of it," says Kelly, with suspicious gratitude. "Then
let us arrange it at once. Miss Beresford might throw her arms round
Ryde, for example: that would be charming."

Desmond looking at this moment as if he would willingly murder him, Mr.
Kelly is apparently satisfied, and sinks to rest with his head upon his
arm once more. No one else has heard the suggestion.

"I think you might help me, instead of giving voice to insane
propositions," says Olga, reproachfully, turning her eyes upon Mr.
Kelly's bowed form,--he is lying prostrate on the grass,--which is
shaking in a palsied fashion. "I really _did_ believe in _you_," she
says, whereupon the young man, springing to his feet, flings his arms
wide, and appeals in an impassioned manner to an unprejudiced public as
to whether he has not been racking his brain in her service for the last
half-hour.

"Then I wish you would go and rack it in somebody else's service," says
Mrs. Bohun, ungratefully.

"Hear her!" says Mr. Kelly, gazing slowly round him. "She still persists
in the unseemly abuse. She is bent on breaking my heart and driving
sleep from mine eyelids. It is ungenerous, the more so that she knows I
have not the courage to tear myself from her beloved presence. You,
Ronayne, an