ne another each the
unfulfilled; each claimed the actual as the child of his prediction.
Victor was to have been ruined long back; Colney the prey of independent
bachelors. Colney had escaped his harpy, and Victor could be called a
millionaire and more. Prophesy was crowned by Colney's dyspepsia, by
Victor's ticklish domestic position. Their pity for one another, their
warm regard, was genuine; only, they were of different temperaments;
and we have to distinguish, that in many estimable and some gifted human
creatures, it is the quality of the blood which directs the current of
opinion.

Victor played-off Colney upon Dudley, for his internal satisfaction, and
to lull Nataly and make her laugh; but he could not, as she hoped he
was doing, take Colney into his confidence; inasmuch as the Optimist,
impelled by his exuberant anticipatory trustfulness, is an author, and
does things; whereas the Pessimist is your chaired critic, with the
delivery of a censor, generally an undoer of things. Our Optimy has
his instinct to tell him of the cast of Pessimy's countenance at the
confession of a dilemma-foreseen! He hands himself to Pessimy, as it
were a sugar-cane, for the sour brute to suck the sugar and whack
with the wood. But he cannot perform his part in return; he gets no
compensation: Pessimy is invulnerable. You waste your time in hurling a
common 'tu-quoque' at one who hugs the worst.

The three walking in the park, with their bright view, and black view,
and neutral view of life, were a comical trio. They had come upon the
days of the unfanned electric furnace, proper to London's early August
when it is not pipeing March. Victor complacently bore heat as well as
cold: but young Dudley was a drought, and Colney a drug to refresh it;
and why was he stewing in London? It was for this young Dudley, who
resembled a London of the sparrowy roadways and wearisome pavements and
blocks of fortress mansions, by chance a water-cart spirting a stale
water: or a London of the farewell dinner-parties, where London's
professed anecdotist lays the dust with his ten times told: Why was not
Nataly relieved of her dreary round of the purchases of furniture! They
ought all now to be in Switzerland or Tyrol. Nesta had of late been
turning over leaves of an Illustrated book of Tyrol, dear to her after
a run through the Innthal to the Dolomites one splendid August; and she
and Nataly had read there of Hofer, Speckbacker, Haspinger; and wrath
ha