'There must be some solution to them?'

'O yes,' he replied, with a hypothetical gaze into the stream; '_some_ solution of course--an equatorial, for instance.'

'What's that?'

'Briefly, an impossibility.  It is a splendid instrument, with an object lens of, say, eight or nine inches aperture, mounted with its axis parallel to the earth's axis, and fitted up with graduated circles for denoting right ascensions and declinations; besides having special eye-pieces, a finder, and all sorts of appliances--clock-work to make the telescope follow the motion in right ascension--I cannot tell you half the conveniences.  Ah, an equatorial is a thing indeed!''An equatorial is the one instrument required to make you quite happy?''Well, yes.''I'll see what I can do.''But, Lady Constantine,' cried the amazed astronomer, 'an equatorial such as I describe costs as much as two grand pianos!'She was rather staggered at this news; but she rallied gallantly, and said, 'Never mind.  I'll make inquiries.''But it could not be put on the tower without people seeing it!  It would have to be fixed to the masonry.  And there must be a dome of some kind to keep off the rain.  A tarpaulin might do.'Lady Constantine reflected.  'It would be a great business, I see,' she said.  'Though as far as the fixing and roofing go, I would of course consent to your doing what you liked with the old column.  My workmen could fix it, could they not?''O yes.  But what would Sir Blount say, if he came home and saw the goings on?'Lady Constantine turned aside to hide a sudden displacement of blood from her cheek.  'Ah--my husband!' she whispered. . . .  'I am just now going to church,' she added in a repressed and hurried tone.  'I will think of this matter.'In church it was with Lady Constantine as with the Lord Angelo of Vienna in a similar situation--Heaven had her empty words only, and her invention heard not her tongue.  She soon recovered from the momentary consternation into which she had fallen at Swithin's abrupt query.  The possibility of that young astronomer becoming a renowned scientist by her aid was a thought which gave her secret pleasure.  The course of rendering him instant material help began to have a great fascination for her; it was a new and unexpected channel for her cribbed and confined emotions.  With experiences so much wider than his, Lady Constantine saw that the chances were perhaps a million to one against Swithin St. Cleeve ever being Astronomer Royal, or Astronomer Extraordinary of any sort; yet the remaining chance in his favour was one of those possibilities which, to a woman of bounding intellect and venturesome 

 Prev. P 37/230 next