and drawn on until she spoke almost as readily of the movements of the
stars as formerly she had spoken of the movements of the Court from
Windsor to London, and from London to Balmoral. In truth, she expected
that Hennessey's passion for the comets would cease as had ceased his
passion for the clergyman's daughter; that his ardour for astronomy
would die as had died his ardour for play-writing; that he would give up
going to _Corona Borealis_ and to the Southern Fish as he had given up
going to the Derby. Time proved her wrong. As the days flew Hennessey
became increasingly impassioned. He was more often at the telescope than
at the Bachelors', and seemed on the way to become almost as gibbous as
the planet Mars. Even he slightly neglected his social duties; and on
one terrible occasion forgot that he was engaged to dine at Cambridge
House because he was assisting at a transit of Mercury.

Now all this began to weigh upon the mind of Mrs. Merillia, despite the
amazing cheerfulness of disposition which she had inherited from two
long lines of confirmed optimists--her ancestors on the paternal and
maternal sides. She did not know how to brood, but, if she had, she
might well have been led to do so. And even as it was she had been
reduced to so unusual a condition of dejection that, a week before the
evening we are describing, she had been obliged to order a box at the
Gaiety Theatre, she, who, like all optimists, habitually frequented
those playhouses where she could behold gloomy tragedies, awful
melodramas, or those ironic pieces called farces, in which the ultimate
misery of which human nature is capable is drawn to its farthest point.

In the beginning of this new dejection of hers, Mrs. Merillia was now
seated in a stage box at the "Gaiety," with an elderly General of Life
Guards, a Mistress of the Robes, and the grandfather of the Central
American Ambassador at the Court of St. James, and all four of them
were smiling at a neat little low comedian, who was singing, without any
voice and with the utmost precision, a pathetic romance entitled, "De
Coon Wot Got de Chuck."

Meanwhile the Prophet was engaged for the twentieth time in considering
whether Mrs. Merillia, on her return from this festival, would have to
be carried to bed by hired menials.

Why?

This brings us to the great turning point in our hero's life, to the
point when first he began to respect the strange powers stirring within
him.

Until he e