MD3PAD 418-420

[Toby G Levy]

        Dixon attempts to bring the conversation with Lord Lepton around
to something he knows about, so he brings up the surveyor's chain.

        Lady Lepton advises Dixon that he will be seeing coal in the
course of making the west line.  It is very valuable. She is
disappointed with her life in the iron plantation. Rumor has it that she
married Lord Lepton because he was a member of the famous Hellfire club
and therefore thought he would be a good sexual partner, but he proved
to be very average.

        A woman slave comes by to offer Dixon a glass of punch that she
promises is very potent.  Lepton sees Dixon observing her, and says he
acquired her in Canada at a convent called Widows of Christ where the
novices descend "into ever more exact forms of carnal mortality."

        Mason is convinced that Lord Lepton is a French spy.

        The dinner gong rings and the guests all move to another wing of
the castle to eat. The dining room is a hemisphere of glass created from
a bubble blown to the size of a barn by a jesuit air pump and then sawn
in half.  The Leptons won't say where the other half of the bubble went
to.

Toby