One of Our Conquerors ......................................................................................................................................1

A GENTLEMAN, noteworthy for a lively countenance and a waistcoat to match it, crossing London Bridge

at noon on a gusty April day, was almost magically detached from his conflict with the gale by some sly strip

of slipperiness, abounding in that conduit of the markets, which had more or less adroitly performed the trick

upon preceding passengers, and now laid this one flat amid the shuffle of feet, peaceful for the moment as the

uncomplaining who have gone to Sabrina beneath the tides. He was unhurt, quite sound, merely astonished,

he remarked, in reply to the inquiries of the first kind helper at his elbow; and it appeared an acceptable

statement of his condition. He laughed, shook his coattails, smoothed the back of his head rather

thoughtfully, thankfully received his runaway hat, nodded bright beams to right and left, and making light of

the muddy stigmas imprinted by the pavement, he scattered another shower of his nods and smiles around, to

signify that, as his good friends would wish, he thoroughly felt his legs and could walk unaided. And he was

in the act of doing it, questioning his familiar behind the waistcoat amazedly, to tell him how such a

misadventure could have occurred to him of all men, when a glance below his chin discomposed his outward

face. "Oh, confound the fellow!" he said, with simple frankness, and was humorously ruffled, having seen

His outcry was no more than the confidential communication of a genial spirit with that distinctive article of

his attire. At the same time, for these friendly people about him to share the fun of the annoyance, he looked

hastily brightly back, seeming with the contraction of his brows to frown, on the little band of observant

Samaritans; in the centre of whom a man who knew himself honourably unclean, perhaps consequently a bit

of a political jewel, hearing one of their number confounded for his pains, and by the wearer of a superfine

dashingwhite waistcoat, was moved to take notice of the total deficiency of gratitude in this kind of

gentleman's look and pocket. If we ask for nothing for helping gentlemen to stand upright on their legs, and

get it, we expect civility into the bargain. Moreover, there are reasons in nature why we choose to give sign of

a particular surliness when our wealthy superiors would have us think their condescending grins are cordials.

The gentleman's eyes were followed on a second hurried downward grimace, the necessitated wrinkles of

which could be stretched by malevolence to a semblance of haughty disgust; reminding us, through our

readings in journals, of the wicked overblown Prince Regent and his Court, together with the view taken of

honest labour in the mind of supercilious luxury, even if indebted to it freshly for a trifle; and the

hoarheaded nineteenthcentury billow of democratic ire craved the word to be set swelling.

But the balance of our public equanimity is prone to violent antic bobbings on occasions when, for example,

an ostentatious garment shall appear disdainful of our class and ourself, and coin of the realm has not usurped

command of one of the scales: thus a fairly pleasant answer, cast in persuasive features, provoked the

"Ah, well, don't be impudent," the gentleman said, by way of amiable remonstrance before a parting.

Their exchange rattled smartly, without a direct hostility, and the gentleman stepped forward.

It was observed in the crowd, that after a few paces he put two fingers on the back of his head.

They might suppose him to be condoling with his recent mishap. But, in fact, a thing had occurred to vex him

more than a descent upon the pavement or damage to his waistcoat's whiteness: he abominated the thought of

an altercation with a member of the mob; he found that enormous beast comprehensible only when it

applauded him; and besides he wished it warmly well; all that was good for it; plentiful dinners, country

excursions, stout menagerie bats, music, a dance, and to bed: he was for patting, stroking, petting the mob, for

tossing it sops, never for irritating it to show an eyetooth, much less for causing it to exhibit the grinders:

and in endeavouring to get at the grounds of his dissension with that dirtyfisted fellow, the recollection of

the word punctilio shot a throb of pain to the spot where his mishap had rendered him susceptible. Headache

threatenedand to him of all men! But was there ever such a word for drumming on a cranium? Puzzles are

presented to us now and then in the course of our days; and the smaller they are the better for the purpose, it

would seem; and they come in rattleboxes, they are actually children's toys, for what they contain, but not

the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a

mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Or does this happen to us only after a fall?

He tried a suspension of his mental efforts, and the word was like the clapper of a disorderly bell, striking

through him, with reverberations, in the form of interrogations, as to how he, of all men living, could by any

chance have got into a wrangle, in a thoroughfare, on London Bridge, of all places in the world!he, so

popular, renowned for his affability, his amiability; having no dislike to common dirty dogs, entirely the

reverse, liking them and doing his best for them; and accustomed to receive their applause. And in what way

But I am treating it seriously! he said, and jerked a dead laugh while fixing a button of his coat.

That he should have treated it seriously, furnished next the subject of cogitation; and here it was plainly

suggested, that a degradation of his physical system, owing to the shock of the fall, must be seen and

acknowledged; far it had become a perverted engine, to pull him down among the puerilities, and very soon

he was worrying at punctilio anew, attempting to read the riddle of the application of it to himself, angry that

he had allowed it to be the final word, and admitting it a famous word for the closing of a controversy:it

banged the door and rolled drumnotes; it deafened reason. And was it a London cockney crowword of the

day, or a word that had stuck in the fellow's head from the perusal of his pothouse newspaper columns?

Furthermore, the plea of a fall, and the plea of a shock from a fall, required to account for the triviality of the

mind, were humiliating to him who had never hitherto missed a step, or owned to the shortest of collapses.

This confession of deficiency in explosive reparteeusing a friend's term for the ready giftwas an old and

a rueful one with Victor Radnor. His godmother Fortune denied him that. She bestowed it on his friend

Fenellan, and little else. Simeon Fenellan could clap the halter on a coltish mob; he had positively caught the

roar of cries and stilled it, by capping the cries in turn, until the people cheered him; and the effect of the

scene upon Victor Radnor disposed him to rank the gift of repartee higher than a certain rosily oratorical that

he was permitted to tell himself he possessed, in bottle if not on draught. Let it only be explosive repartee: the

wellfused bomb, the bubble to the stone, echo round the horn. Fenellan would have discharged an

extinguisher on punctilio in emission. Victor Radnor was unable to cope with it reflectively.

No, but one doesn't like being beaten by anything! he replied to an admonishment of his better mind, as he

touched his two fingers, more significantly dubious than the whole hand, at the back of his head, and checked

or stemmed the current of a fear. For he was utterly unlike himself; he was dwelling on a trifle, on a matter

discernibly the smallest, an incident of the streets; and although he refused to feel a bump or any responsive

notification of a bruise, he made a sacrifice of his native pride to his intellectual, in granting that he must

Yes, well, and if a tumble distorts our ideas of life, and an odd word engrosses our speculations, we are poor

creatures, he addressed another friend, from whom he stood constitutionally in dissent, naming him Colney;

and under pressure of the name, reviving old wrangles between them upon man's present achievements and

his probable destinies: especially upon England's grandeur, vitality, stability, her intelligent appreciation of

her place in the universe; not to speak of the historic dignity of London City. Colney had to be overcome

afresh, and he fled, but managed, with two or three of his bitter phrases, to make a cuttlefish fight of it, that

The Daniel Lambert of Cities: the Female Annuitant of Nations:and such like, wretched stuff, proper to

Colney Durance, easily dispersed and outlaughed when we have our vigour. We have as much as we need

of it in summoning a contemptuous Pooh to our lips, with a shrug at venomous dyspepsia.

Nevertheless, a malignant sketch of Colney's, in the which Hengist and Horsa, our fishy Saxon originals, in

modern garb of liveryman and gaitered squire, flatheaded, paunchy, assiduously servile, are shown blacking

BenIsrael's boots and grooming the princely stud of the Jew, had come so near to Victor Radnor's

apprehensions of a possible, if not an impending, consummation, that the ghastly vision of the Jew Dominant

in London City, over England, over Europe, America, the world (a picture drawn in literary sepia by Colney:

with our poor hang neck population uncertain about making a bellrope of the forelock to the Satyrsnouty

master; and the Norman Lord de Warenne handing him for a lump sum son and daughter, both to be

Hebraized in their different ways), fastened on the most mercurial of patriotic men, and gave him a

It lasted nearly a minute. His recovery was not in this instance due to the calling on himself for the rescue of

an ancient and glorious country; nor altogether to the spectacle of the shipping, over the parapet, to his right:

the hundreds of masts rising out of the merchant river; London's unrivalled mezzotint and the City

rhetorician's inexhaustible argument: he gained it rather from the imperious demand of an animated and

thirsty frame for novel impressions. Commonly he was too hot with his business, and airy fancies above it,

when crossing the bridge, to reflect in freshness on its wonders; though a phrase could spring him alive to

them; a suggestion of the Foreigner, jealous, condemned to admire in despair of outstripping, like Satan

worsted; or when a Premier's fine inflation magnified the scene at City banquetsexciting while audible, if a

waggery in memory; or when England's cherished Bard, the Leading Article, blew bellows, and wind primed

That a phrase on any other subject was of much the same effect, in relation to it, may be owned; he was

lightly kindled. The scene, however, had a sharp sparkle of attractiveness at the instant. Down went the

twirling horizontal pillars of a strong tide from the arches of the bridge, breaking to wild water at a remove;

and a reddish Northern cheek of curdling piping East, at shrilly puffs between the Tower and the Custom

House, encountered it to whip and ridge the Hood against descending tug and long tail of sternajerk empty

barges; with a steamer slowly nosing round off the wharfcranes, preparing to swirl the screw; and

halfbottomupward boats dancing harpooner beside their whale; along an avenue, not fabulously golden, of

the deputy masts of all nations, a wintry woodland, every rag aloft curling to volume; and here the spouts and

the mounds of steam, and rolls of brown smoke there, variously undulated, curved to vanish; cold blue sky

Gazing along that grand highway of the voyaging forest, your London citizen of good estate has reproached

his country's poets for not pouring out, succinctly and melodiously, his multitudinous larv� of notions

begotten by the scene. For there are times when he would pay to have them sung; and he feels them big; he

thinks them human in their bulk; they are Londinensian; they want but form and fire to get them scored on

the tablets of the quotable at festive boards. This he can promise to his poets. As for otherwhere than at the

festive, Commerce invoked is a Goddess that will have the reek of those boards to fill her nostrils, and poet

and alderman alike may be dedicate to the sublime, she leads them, after two sniffs of an idea concerning her,

And besides it is barely possible for our rounded citizen, in the mood of meditation, to direct his gaze off the

bridge along the waterway Northeastward without beholding as an eye the glow of whitebait's bowwindow

by the riverside, to the front of the summer sunset, a league or so down stream; where he sees, in memory

savours, the Elysian end of Commerce: frontispiece of a tale to fetch us up the outwearied spectre of old

Apicius; yea, and urge Crispinus to wheel his purse into the market for the purchase of a costlier mullet!

In that case, we do not ask our country's poets to compose a single stanza of eulogy's rhymesfar from it.

Far to the contrary, we bid ourselves remember the sons of whom we are; instead of revelling in the fruits of

Commerce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied windows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond

Thames, away to the fishermen's deeps, Old England's native element, where the strenuous ancestry of a race

yet and ever manful at the stress of trial are heard around and aloft whistling us back to the splendid strain of

muscle, and spray fringes cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoops and hillocks, and Death and Man are

We do: or there at least we left it. Whether to recover it when wanted, is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and

dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and redstubble chins, might

take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the capture of cod; headed by Harald and

Hardiknut, they might roll surges to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy.

Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has been backsliding once more, and must

repent in ashes, as those who are for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of lucre,

Ay, but brain beats muscle, and what if the Jew should prove to have superior power of brain? A dreaded

hypothesis! Why, then you see the insurgent Saxon seamen (of the names in two syllables with accent on the

first), and their Danish captains, and it may be but a remnant of highnosed old Norman Lord de Warenne

beside them, in the criminal box: and presently the Jew smoking a giant regalia cigar on a balcony giving

view of a gallowstree. But we will try that: on our side, to back a native pugnacity, is morality, humanity,

fraternity nature's rights, aha! and who withstands them? on his, a troop of mercenaries!

And that lands me in Red Republicanism, a hop and a skip from Socialism! said Mr. Radnor, and chuckled

ironically at the natural declivity he had come to. Still, there was an idea in it. . . .

A short run or attempt at running after the idea, ended in pain to his head near the spot where the haunting

Yet we cannot relinquish an idea that was ours; we are vowed to the pursuit of it. Mr. Radnor lighted on the

tracks, by dint of a thought flung at his partner Mr. Inchling's dread of the Jews. Inchling dreaded Scotchmen

as well, and Americans, and Armenians, and Greeks: latterly Germans hardly less; but his dread of absorption

in Jewry, signifying subjection, had often precipitated a deplorable shrug, in which Victor Radnor now

perceived the skirts of his idea, even to a fancy that something of the idea must have struck Inchling when he

shrugged: the idea being . . . he had lost it again. Definition seemed to be an extirpating enemy of this idea, or

she was by nature shy. She was very feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted. Not until

nigh upon the close of his history did she return, fullstatured and embraceable, to Victor Radnor.

THE fair dealing with readers demands of us, that a narrative shall not proceed at slower pace than legs of a

man in motion; and we are still but little more than midway across London Bridge. But if a man's mind is to

be taken as a part of him, the likening of it, at an introduction, to an army on the opening march of a great

campaign, should plead excuses for tardy forward movements, in consideration of the large amount of matter

you have to review before you can at all imagine yourselves to have made his acquaintance. This it is not

necessary to do when you are set astride the enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves the man's mind at

home while he performs the deeds befitting him: he can indeed be rapid. Whether more active, is a question

asking for your notions of the governing element in the composition of man, and of his present business here.

The Tale inspirits one's earlier ardours, when we sped without baggage, when the Impossible was wings to

imagination, and heroic sculpture the simplest act of the chisel. It does not advance, 'tis true; it drives the

whirligig circle round and round the single existing central point; but it is enriched with applause of the boys

and girls of both ages in this land; and all the English critics heap their honours on its brave old

Simplicity:our national literary flag, which signalizes us while we float, subsequently to flap above the

shallows. One may sigh for it. An illfortuned minstrel who has by fateful direction been brought to see with

distinctness, that man is not as much comprised in external features as the monkey, will be devoted to the

After his ineffectual catching at the volatile idea, Mr. Radnor found repose in thoughts of his daughter and

her dear mother. They had begged him to put on an overcoat this day of bitter wind, or a silken kerchief for

the throat. Faithful to the Spring, it had been his habit since boyhood to show upon his person something of

the hue of the vernal month, the white of the daisied meadow, and although he owned a light overcoat to

dangle from shoulders at the Opera crush, he declined to wear it for protection. His gesture of shaking and

expanding whenever the tender request was urged on him, signified a physical opposition to the control of

garments. Mechanically now, while doating in fancy over the couple beseeching him, he loosened the button

across his defaced waistcoat, exposed a large measure of chest to flaws of a wind barbed on Norwegian peaks

by the brewers of cough and catarrhhorrid women of the whistling clouts, in the pay of our doctors. He

braved them; he starved the profession. He was that man in fifty thousand who despises hostile elements and

goes unpunished, calmly erect among a sneezing and tumbled host, as a lighthouse overhead of breezy fleets.

The coursing of his blood was by comparison electrical; he had not the sensation of cold, other than that of an

effort of the elements to arouse him; and so quick was he, through this fine animation, to feel, think, act, that

the three successive tributaries of conduct appeared as an irreflective flash and a gamester's daring in the vein

to men who had no deep knowledge of him and his lightning arithmetic for measuring, sounding, and

Naturally he was among the happiest of human creatures; he willed it so, with consent of circumstances; a

boisterous consent, as when votes are reckoned for a favourite candidate: excepting on the part of a small

band of black dissentients in a corner, a minute opaque body, devilish in their irreconcilability, who maintain

their struggle to provoke discord, with a cry disclosing the one error of his youth, the sole bad step chargeable

upon his antecedents. But do we listen to them? Shall we not have them turned out? He gives the sign for it;

and he leaves his buoying constituents to outroar them: and he tells a friend that it was not, as one may say,

an error, although an erratic step: but let us explain to our bosom friend; it was a step quite unregretted,

gloried in; a step deliberately marked, to be done again, were the time renewed: it was a step necessitated

(emphatically) by a false preceding step; and having youth to plead for it, in the first instance, youth and

ignorance; and secondly, and O how deeply truly! Love. Deep true love, proved by years, is the advocate.

He tells himself at the same time, after lending ear to the advocate's exordium and a favourite sentence, that,

judged by the Powers (to them only can he expose the whole skeleton cupboard of the case), judged by

As to that, there is no doubt: whom they, allseeing, discerning as they do, acquit they justify.

They, seeing all the facts, are not unintelligent of distinctions, as the world is.

What, to them, is the spot of the error?admitting it as an error. They know it for a thing of convention, not

of Nature. We stand forth to plead it in proof of an adherence to Nature's laws: we affirm that, far from a

defilement, it is an illumination and stamp of nobility. On the beloved who shares it with us, it is a stamp of

the highest nobility. Our world has many ways for signifying its displeasure, but it cannot brand an angel.

This was another favourite sentence of Love's grand oration for the defence. So seductive was it to the

Powers who sat in judgement on the case, that they all, when the sentence came, turned eyes upon the angel,

She, then, were he rebuked, would have strength to uplift him. And who, calling her his own, could be placed

Mr. Radnor could rationally say that he was made for happiness; he flew to it, he breathed, dispensed it. How

conceive the clearsighted celestial Powers as opposing his claim to that estate? Not they. He knew, for he

had them safe in the locked chamber .of his breast, to yield him subservient responses. The world, or

Puritanic members of it, had pushed him to the trial once or twiceor had put on an air of doing so; creating

a temporary disturbance, ending in a merry duet with his daughter Nesta Victoria: a glorious trio when her

mother Natalia, sweet lily that she was, shook the rainwater from her cup and followed the good example to

Nesta's promising soprano, and her mother's contralto, and his baritonea true baritone, not so well trained

as their accurate notesshould be rising in spirited union with the curtain of that secret: there was matter for

song and concert, triumph and gratulation in it. And during the whole passage of the bridge, he had not once

cast thought on a secret so palpitating, the cause of the morning's expedition and a long year's prospect of the

present day! It seemed to have been knocked clean out of itpunctilioed out, Fenellan might say. Nor had

any combinations upon the theme of business displaced it. Just before the fall, the whole drama of the

He refused to feel any sensible bruise on his head, with the admission that he perhaps might think he felt one:

which was virtually no more than the feeling of a thought;what his friend Dr. Peter Yatt would define as

feeling a rotifer astir in the curative compartment of a hom*opathic globule: and a playful fancy may do that

Mr. Radnor had a quaint experience of the effects of the infinitely little while threading his way to a

haberdasher's shop for new white waistcoats. Under the shadow of the representative statue of City

Corporations and London's majesty, the figure of Royalty, worshipful in its marbled redundancy, fronting the

bridge, on the slope where the seas of fish and fruit below throw up a thin line of their drift, he stood

contemplating the not unamiable, reposefullyjolly Guelphic countenance, from the loose jowl to the bent

knee, as if it were a novelty to him; unwilling to trust himself to the roadway he had often traversed, equally

careful that his hesitation should not be seen. A trifle more impressible, he might have imagined the smoky

figure and magnum of pursiness barring the City against him. He could have laughed aloud at the hypocrisy

behind his quiet look of provincial wonderment at London's sculptor's art; and he was partly tickled as well

by the singular fit of timidity enchaining him. Cart, omnibus, cab, van, barrow, donkeytray, went by in

strings, broken here and there, and he could not induce his legs to take advantage of the gaps; he listened to a

warning that he would be down again if he tried it, among those wheels; and his nerves clutched him, like a

troop of household women, to keep him from the hazard of an exposure to the horrid crunch, pitiless as tiger's

teeth; and we may say truly, that once down, or once out of the rutted line, you are food for lion and

"For fine!today at least," Mr. Radnor affably replied to a stranger; and gazing on the face of his friend

Fenellan, knew the voice, and laughed: "You?" He straightened his back immediately to cross the road,

dismissing nervousness as a vapour, asking, between a cab and a van: "Anything doing in the City?" For Mr.

The reply was deferred until they had reached the pavement, when Mr. Fenellan said: "I'll tell you," and

But it was merely the mental inquiry following a glance at mudspots on the coat.

"We'll lunch; lunch with me, I must eat, tell me then," said Mr. Radnor, adding within himself: "Emptiness!

want of food!" to account for recent ejaculations and qualms. He had not eaten for a good four hours.

Fenellan's tone signified to his feverish sensibility of the moment, that the matter was personal; and the

intimation of a touch on domestic affairs caused sinkings in his vacuity, much as though his heart were

He mentioned the slip on the bridge, to explain his need to visit a haberdasher's shop, and pointed at the

"They have their readymade at these shopslast year's perhaps, never mind, do for the day," said Mr.

Radnor, impatient for eating, now that he had spoken of it. "A basin of turtle; I can't wait. A brush of the coat;

mud must be dry by this time. Clear turtle, I think, with a bottle of the Old Veuve. Not bad news to tell? You

"Too well to tell bad news of her," said Mr. Fenellan in a manner to reassure his friend, as he intended. "You

"Something of that, I suppose." And so saying, Mr. Radnor entered the shop of his quest, to be complimented

by the shopkeeper, while the attendants climbed the ladder to upper stages for whitewaistcoat boxes, on his

being the first bird of the season; which it pleased him to hear; for the smallest of our gratifications in life

THEY were known at the house of the turtle and the attractive Old Veuve: a champagne of a sobered

sweetness, of a great year, a great age, counting up to the extremer maturity attained by wines of stilly depths;

and their worthy comrade, despite the wanton sparkles, for the promoting of the state of reverential

wonderment in rapture, which an ancient wine will lead to, well you wot. The silly girly sugary crudity has

given way to womanly suavity, matronly composure, with yet the sparkles; they ascend; but hue and flavour

tell of a soul that has come to a lodgement there. It conducts the youthful man to temples of dusky thought:

philosophers partaking of it are drawn by the arms of garlanded nymphs about their necks into the fathomless

of inquiries. It presents us with a sphere, for the pursuit of the thing we covet most. It bubbles over

mellowness; it has, in the marriage with Time, extracted a spice of individuality from the saccharine: by

miracle, one would say, were it not for our knowledge of the right noble issue of Time when he and good

things unite. There should be somewhere legends of him and the wineflask. There must be meanings to that

effect in the Mythology, awaiting unravelment. For the subject opens to deeper than cellars, and is a tree with

vast ramifications of the roots and the spreading growth, whereon half if not all the mythic Gods, Inferior and

Superior, Infernal and Celestial, might be shown sitting in concord, performing in concert, harmoniously

receiving sacrificial offerings of the black or the white; and the black not extinguishing the fairer fellow. Tell

us of a certainty that Time has embraced the wineflask, then may it be asserted (assuming the great year for

the wine, i.e. combinations above) that a speck of the white within us who drink will conquer, to rise in main

ascension over volumes of the black. It may, at a greater venture, but confidently, be said in plain speech, that

the Bacchus of auspicious birth induces ever to the worship of the loftier Deities.

Think as you will; forbear to come hauling up examples of malarious men, in whom these pourings of the

golden rays of life breed fogs; and be moved, since you are scarcely under an obligation to hunt the meaning,

in tolerance of some dithyrambic inebriety of narration (quiverings of the reverent pen) when we find

ourselves entering the circle of a most magnetic polarity. Take it for not worse than accompanying choric

flourishes, in accord with Mr. Victor Radnor and Mr. Simeon Fenellan at their sipping of the venerable wine.

Seated in a cosy corner, near the grey City window edged with a sooty maze, they praised the wine, in the

neuter and in the feminine; that for the glass, this for the widowbranded bottle: not as poets hymning; it was

done in the City manner, briefly, part pensively, like men travelling to the utmost bourne of flying flavour (a

Such a wine, in its capturing permeation of us, insists on being for a time a theme.

"I wonder!" said Mr. Radnor, completely restored, eyeing his halfemptied second glass and his

"They'll never hit on such another discovery in their cellar, unless they unearth a fifth corner."

Mr. Radnor watched the deliberate constant ascent of bubbles through their rosetopaz transparency. He

drank. That notion of the dish of turtle was an inspiration of the right: he ought always to know it for the want

of replenishment when such a man as he went quaking. His latest experiences of himself were incredible; but

they passed, as the dimples of the stream. He finished his third glass. The bottle, like the cellarwine, was at

ebb: unlike the cellarwine, it could be set flowing again. He prattled, in the happy ignorance of compulsion:

"Fenellan, remember, I had a sort of right to the wineto the best I could get; and this Old Veuve, more than

any other, is a bridal wine! We heard of Giulia Sanfredini's marriage to come off with the Spanish Duke, and

drank it to the toast of our little Nesta's godmother. I've told you. We took the girl to the Opera, when quite a

little onethat high:and I declare to you, it was marvellous! Next morning after breakfast, she plants

herself in the middle of the room, and strikes her attitude for song, and positively, almost with the

Sanfredini's voiceillusion of it, you know,trills us out more than I could have believed credible to be

recollectedby a child. But I've told you the story. We called her Fredi from that day. I sent the diva, with

excuses and compliments, a nuptial present necklace, Roman goldwork, locketpendant, containing sunny

curl, and below a fine pearl; really pretty; telling her our grounds for the liberty. She replied, accepting the

responsible office; touching letterwe found it so; framed in Fredi's room, under her godmother's

photograph. Fredi has another heroine now, though she worships her old one still; she never abandons her old

Mr. Fenellan nodded; he had a tenderness for the garrulity of Old Veuve, and for the damsel. Chatter on that

Mr. Radnor meanwhile scribbled, and despatched a strip of his Notebook, bearing a scrawl of orders, to his

office. He was now fully himself, benevolent, combative, gay, alert for amusement or the probing of schemes

to the quick, weighing the good and the bad in them with his fine touch on proportion.

"City dead flat? A monotonous key; but it's about the same as fetching a breath after a run; only, true, it lasts

too long not healthy! Skepsey will bring me my letters. I was down in the country early this morning,

looking over the house, with Taplow, my architect; and he speaks fairly well of the contractors. Yes, down at

Lakelands, and saw my first lemon butterfly in a dell of sunshine, out of the wind, and had half a mind to

catch it for Fredi,and should have caught it myself, if I had! The truth is, we three are country born and

bred; we pine in London. Good for a season; you know my old feeling. They are to learn the secret of

Lakelands tomorrow. It's great fun; they think I don't see they've had their suspicion for some time. You

saidsomebody said`the eye of a needle for what they let slip of their secrets, and the point of it for

penetrating yours:'women. But no; my dear souls didn't prick and bother. And they dealt with a man in

"Keeping a secret's the lid on a boiling pot with you," Mr. Fenellan said; and he mused on the profoundness

Mr. Fenellan's delay in the delivery of his news was eloquent to reveal the one hateful topic; and this being

seen, it waxed to such increase of size with the passing seconds, that prudence called for it.

"Nothing very particular. I came into the City to look at a warehouse they want to mount double guard on.

Your idea of the fireman's nightpatrol and wires has done wonders for the office."

Mr. Fenellan's remark, that he had nothing very particular to tell, reduced it to the mere touch upon a

vexatious matter, which one has to endure in the ears at times; but it may be postponed. So Mr. Radnor

encouraged him to talk of an Insurance Office Investment. Where it is all bog and mist, as in the City today,

the maxim is, not to take a step, they agreed. Whether it was attributable to an unconsumed glut of the

markets, or apprehensions of a panic, had to be considered. Both gentlemen were angry with the Birds on the

flags of foreign nations, which would not imitate a sawdust Lion to couch reposefully. Incessantly they

"They crack the City bubbles and bladders, at all events," Mr. Fenellan said. "But if we let our journals go on

making use of them, in the shape of sham hawks overhead, we shall pay for their one good day of the game

"No, no; it's a niggardly national purse, not the journals," Mr. Radnor said. "The journals are trading engines.

Panics are grist to them; so are wars; but they do their duty in warning the taxpayer and rousing Parliament.

Dr. Schlesien's right: we go on believing that our God Neptune will do everything for us, and won't see that

Steam has paralyzed his Trident:good! You and Colney are hard on Schlesienor at him, I should say.

He's right: if we won't learn that we have become Continentals, we shall be marched over. Laziness,

"Oh, be hanged!" interrupted Fenellan. "As much of the former as you like. He's right about our

`individualismus' being another name for selfishness, and showing the usual deficiency in external features;

it's an individualism of all of a pattern, as when a mob cuts its lucky, each fellow his own way. Well, then,

conscript them, and they'll be all of a better pattern. The only thing to do, and the cheapest. By heaven! it's

"Not till you've got the drop of poison in your blood, in the form of an army landed. That will teach you to

"No, Fenellan! Besides they've got to land. I guarantee a trusty army and navy under a contract, at twothirds

of the present cost. We'll start a National Defence Insurance Company after the next panic."

"During," said Mr. Fenellan, and there was a flutter of laughter at the unobtrusive hint for seizing Dame

"But you must try and run down with us to Lakelands to morrow," Mr. Radnor resumed on a cheerfuller

theme. "You have not yet seen all I've done there. And it's a castle with a drawbridge: no exchanging of

visits, as we did at Craye Farm and at Creckholt; we are there for country air; we don't court neighbours at

allperhaps the elect; it will depend on Nataly's wishes. We can accommodate our Concertset, and about

thirty or forty more, for as long as they like. You see, that was my intentionto be independent of

neighbouring society. Madame Callet guarantees dinners or hot suppers for eightyand Armandine is the

last person to be recklessly boasting.When was it I was thinking last of Armandine?" He asked himself

Mr. Fenellan was reading his friend's character by the light of his remarks and in opposition to them, after the

critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear: but it was amiably and trippingly, on the dance of the

His look, however, was one that reminded; and Mr. Radnor cried: "Now! whatever it is!"

"I had an interview:I assure you," Mr. Fenellan interposed to pacify: "the smallest of trifles, and to be

expected: I thought you ought to know it:an interview with her lawyer; office business, increase of

"Speak her name, speak the woman's name; we're talking like a pair of conspirators," exclaimed Mr. Radnor.

Mr. Radnor's clearwater eyes hardened to stony as their vision ran along the consequences of her having

"Earlier this time!" he added, thrummed on the table, and thumped with knuckles. "I make my stand at

"Jarniman, you mean: he's her butler, yes, the scoundrel h'mpah! Heaven forgive me! she's an honest

woman at least; I wouldn't rob her of her little: fiftynine or sixty next September, fifteenth of the month!

with the constitution of a broken drugbottle, poor soul! She hears everything from Jarniman: he catches

wind of everything. All foreseen, Fenellan, foreseen. I have made my stand at Lakelands, and there's my flag

till it's hauled down over Victor Radnor. London kills Nataly as well as Frediand me: that isI can use

the words to youI get back to primal innocence in the country. We all three have the feeling. You're a man

to understand. My beasts, and the wild flowers, hedgebanks, and stars. Fredi's poetess will tell you. Quiet

waters reflecting. I should feel it in Paris as well, though they have nightingales in their Bois. It's the rustic I

want to bathe me; and I had the feeling at school, biting at Horace. Well, this is my Sabine Farm, rather on a

larger scale, for the sake of friends. Come, and pure air, water from the springs, walks and rides in lanes, high

sandlanes; Nataly loves them; Fredi worships the old roots of trees: she calls them the faces of those weedy

sandy lanes. And the two dear souls on their own estate, Fenellan! And their poultry, cows, cream. And a

certain influence one has in the country socially. I make my stand on a homenot empty punctilio."

"Don't bawl the word," said Mr. Radnor, at the drum of whose ears it rang and sang. "Here in the City the

woman's harmless; and here," he struck his breast. "But she can shoot and hit another through me. Ah, the

witch!poor wretch! poor soul! Only, she's malignant. I could swear! But Colney's right for once in

"`Empty buckets to haul up impotent demons, whom we have to pay as heavily as the ready devil himself,'"

Mr. Fenellan supplied the phrase. "Only, the moment old Colney moralizes, he's what the critics call

"I'd like to distract it a bit from the biggest of 'em." He pointed finger at the region of the heart.

"Here we have Skepsey," said Mr. Radnor, observing the rapid approach of a lean small figure, that in about

THIS little dart of a man came to a stop at a respectful distance from his master, having the look of an

arrested needle in mechanism. His lean slip of face was an illumination of vivacious grey from the quickest of

prominent large eyes. He placed his master's letters legibly on the table, and fell to his posture of attention,

Deploring in motion the announcement he had to make, Skepsey replied: "I have a difficulty in getting the

plan treated seriously:a person of no station:it does not appear of national importance. Ladies are

against. They decline their signatures; and ladies have great influence; because of the blood; which we know

is very slight, rather healthy than not; and it could be proved for the advantage of the frailer sex. They seem

to be unaware of their own interestsladies. The contention all around us is with ignorance. My plan is

written; I have shown it, and signatures of gentlemen, to many of our City notablesfavourable in most

cases: gentlemen of the Stock Exchange highly. The clergy and the medical profession are quite with me."

"Morality. I have fully explained to them:after his work at the desk all day, the young City clerk wants

refreshment. He needs it, must have it. I propose to catch him on his way to his musichalls and other places,

and take him to one of our establishments. A short term of instruction, and he would find a pleasure in the

gloves; it would delight him more than excessesbeer and tobacco. The female in her right place, certainly."

Skepsey supplicated honest interpretation of his hearer, and pursued: "It would improve his physical strength,

"That would have to be thought over, sir. It would be better for them than using their nails."

"Yes; with regard to the female, sir: I confess, my scheme does not include them. They dance; that is a

healthy exercise. One has only to say, that it does not add to the national force, in case of emergency. I look

to that. And I am particular in proposing an exercise independent ofI have to saysex. Not that there is

"Quite. You would have boxing with the gloves to be a kind of monastic recreation."

"Recreation is the word, sir; I have often admired it," said Skepsey, blinking, unsure of the signification of

"I was a bit of a boxer once," Mr. Fenellan said, conscious of height and breadth in measuring the wisp of a

Skepsey paid him the encomium after a respectful summary of his gifts in a glimpse. Mr. Fenellan bowed to

"Skepsey's craze: regeneration of the English race by boxing nucleus of a national army?"

"To face an enemy at close quartersit teaches that, sir. I have always been of opinion that courage may be

taught. I do not say heroism. And setting aside for a moment thoughts of an army, we create more valuable

citizens. Protection to the weak in streets and byplaces:shocking examples of ruffians maltreating

Skepsey toned his assent to the diminishing thinness where a suspicion of the negative begins to wind upon a

"Knowing his own intentions; and before an ignorant mob: strong, you say, sir? I venture my word that a

decent lad, with science, would beat him. It is a question of the study and practice of first principles."

Skepsey conjured the scene by bending his head and peering abstractedly, as if over spectacles.

"My brother Dartrey had a lesson or two from you in the first principles, I think?"

"Captain Dartrey is an athlete, sir: exceedingly quick and clever; a hard boxer to beat."

"I much regret it, sir, much, that we have lost him. Captain Dartrey Fenellan was a beautiful fencer. He gave

me some instruction; unhappily, I have to acknowledge, too late. It is a beautiful art. Captain Dartrey says,

the French excel at it. But it asks for a weapon, which nature has not given: whereas the fists . . ."

"The first principles of commercial activity have retreated to earth's maziest penetralia, where no tides

are!is it not so, Skepsey?" said Mr. Fenellan, whose initiative and exuberance in loquency had been

restrained by a slight oppression, known to guests; especially to the guest in the earlier process of his

magnification and illumination by virtue of a grand old wine; and also when the news he has to communicate

may be a stir to unpleasant heaps. The shining lips and eyes of his florid face now proclaimed speech, with

his Puckish fancy jacko' lanterning over it. "Business hangs to swing at every City door, like a ragshop

Doll, on the gallows of overproduction. Stocks and Shares are hollow nuts not a squirrel of the lot would stop

to crack for sight of the milky kernel mouldered to beard. Percentage, like a cabman without a fare, has gone

to sleep inside his vehicle. Dividend may just be seen by tiptoe stock holders, twinkling heels over the far

horizon. Too true!and our merchants, brokers, bankers, projectors of Companies, parade our City to

remind us of the poor steamed fellows trooping out of the burst boilerroom of the big ship Leviathan, in old

years; a shade or two paler than the crowd o' the passengers, apparently alive and conversible, but corpses, all

"And you, Fenellan?" cried his host, inspired for a second bottle by the lovely nonsense of a voluble friend

An order was tossed to the waiter, and both gentlemen screwed their lips in relish of his heavy consent to

"At the office in forty minutes," Skepsey's master nodded to him and shot him forth, calling him back: "By

the way, in case a man named Jarniman should ask to see me, you turn him to the rightabout."

"A good servant," Mr. Radnor said. "Few of us think of our country so much, whatever may be said of the

specific he offers. Colney has impressed him somehow immensely: he, studies to write too; pushes to

The second bottle appeared. The waiter, in sincerity a reluctant executioner, heightened his part for the

"Take heart, Benjamin," said Mr. Fenellan; "it's only the bottle dies; and we are the angels above to receive

"It's the loss of the fame of having the wine, that he mourns. But, Benjamin," said Mr. Fenellan, "the fame

Mr. Fenellan murmured to himself: "True enough, it's elegy, though we perform it through a trumpet; and

there's not a doubt of our being down or having knocked the world down, if we're loudly praised."

Benjamin waited to hear approval sounded on the lips: uncertain as a woman is a wine of ticklish age. The

A second bottle, just as good as the first, should, one thoughtlessly supposes, procure us a similar reposeful

and excursive enjoyment, as of men lying on their backs and flying imagination like a kite. The effect was

quite other. Mr. Radnor drank hastily and spoke with heat: "You told me all? tell me that!"

Mr. Fenellan gathered himself together; he sipped, and relaxed his bracing. But there really was a bit more to

tell: not much, was it? Not likely to pull a gale on the voluptuous indolence of a man drawn along by Nere�ds

over sunny seawaves to behold the birth of the FoamGoddess? "According to Carling, her lawyer; that is,

"Does he think I fear anydoes he mean a blow with a weapon? Is it a legal . . . ? At last? Fenellan!"

"But can the good woman dream of that as a blow to strike and hurt, for a punishment?that's her one aim."

"But a blowwhat a word for it! But it's life to us! life! It's the blow we've prayed for. Why, you know it!

Let her strike, we bless her. We've never had an ill feeling to the woman; utterly the contrarypity, pity,

pity! Let her do that, we're at her feet, my Nataly and I. If you knew what my poor girl suffers! She's a saint

at the stake. Chiefly on behalf of her family. Fenellan, you may have a sort of guess at my fortune: I'll own to

"All, Fenellan, allstocks, shares, mines, companies, industries at home and abroadall, at a sweep, to

have the woman strike that blow! Cheerfully would I begin to build a fortune over againsinging! Ha! the

"She won't be touched, and she won't be driven. What's the secret of her? I can't guess, I never could. She's a

"Riddles with wigs and false teeth have to be taken and shaken for the ardently sought secret to reveal itself,"

His picture, with the skeleton issue of any shaking, smote Mr. Radnor's eyes, they turned over. "Oh!her

charms! She had a desperate belief in her beauty. The woman's undoubtedly charitable; she's not without a

mindsort of mind: well, it shows no crack till it's put to use. Heart! yes, against me she has plenty of it.

They say she used to be courted; she talked of it: `my courtiers, Mr. Victor!' There, heaven forgive me, I

"It looks as if she were only inexorably human," said Mr. Fenellan, crushing a delicious gulp of the wine, that

foamed along the channel to flavour. "We read of the tester of a banditbed; and it flattened unwary

recumbents to pancakes. An escape from the like of that seems pleadable, should be: none but the drowsy

Mr. Radnor was taken with the illustration of his case. "For the sake of my sanity, it was! to preserve my . . .

but any word makes nonsense of it. CouldI must ask youcould any sane manyou were abroad in

those days, horrible days! and never met her: I say, could you consent to be tiedI admit the vow,

ceremony, so forthtied toI was barely twentyone: I put it to you, Fenellan, was it in reason an

engagementwhich is, I take it, a mutual plight of faith, in good faith; that is, with capacity on both sides to

keep the engagement: between the man you know I was in youth and a more than middleaged woman crazy

up to the edge of the cliffas Colney says half the world is, and she positively is when her spite is roused.

No, Fenellan, I have nothing on my conscience with regard to the woman. She had wealth: I left her not one

penny the worse forbut she was not one to reckon it, I own. She could be generous, was, with her money.

If she had struck this blowI know she thought of it: or if she would strike it now, I could not only forgive

"I!" Mr. Radnor shrugged at mention of his personal burdens. "Praise my Nataly if you like! Made for one

another, if ever two in this world! You know us both, and do you doubt it? The sin would have been for us

two to meet andbut enough when I say, that I am she, she me, till death and beyond it: that's my firm faith.

Nataly teaches me the religion of life, and you may learn what that is when you fall in love with a woman.

Tears fell from him, two drops. He blinked, bugled in his throat, eyed his watch, and smiled: "The finishing

glass! We should have had to put Colney to bed. Few men stand their wine. You and I are not lamed by it; we

can drink and do business: my first experience in the City was, that the power to drink keeping a sound

"Not if it fiddles inside. I confess to that effect upon me. I've a waltz going on, like the snake with the tail in

"Consult me tomorrow," said Mr. Radnor, somewhat pained for having inconsiderately misled the man he

"Make a practice of getting over as much of your business in the early morning as you well can."

Mr. Radnor added hints of advice to a frail humanity: he was indulgent, the giant spoke in good fellowship. It

would have been to have strained his meaning, for purposes of sarcasm upon him, if one had taken him to

He stopped, and laughed: "Now I'm pumping my pulpiteh? You come with us to Lakelands. I drive the

ladies down to my office, ten a.m.: if it's fine; train halfpast. We take a basket. By the way, I had no letter

Mr. Radnor stood gazing. He asked for the name of the place of the burial. He heard without seizing it. A

simulacrum spectrespark of hopefulness shot up in his imagination, glowed and quivered, darkening at the

utterance of the Dutch syllables, leaving a tinge of witless envy. Dartrey Fenellan had buried the wife whose

behaviour vexed and dishonoured him: and it was in Africa! One would have to go to Africa to be free of the

galling. But Dartrey had gone, and he was free!The strange faint freaks of our sensations when struck to

leap and throw off their load after a long affliction, play these disorderly pranks on the brain; and they are

faint, but they come in numbers, they are recurring, always in ambush. We do not speak of them: we have not

words to stamp the indefinite things; generally we should leave them unspoken if we had the words; we know

Dartrey free, he was relieved of the murderous drama incessantly in the mind of shackled men.

It seemed like one of the miracles of a divine intervention, that Dartrey should be free, suddenly free; and free

while still a youngish man. He was in himself a wonderful fellow, the pick of his country for vigour,

gallantry, trustiness, high mindedness; his heavenly good fortune decked him as a prodigy.

"None." Mr. Radnor withdrew his hand from head to hat, clapped it on and cried cheerily: "Now to business;"

as men may, who have confidence in their ability to concentrate an instant attention upon the substantial.

"You dine with us. The usual Quartet: Peridon, Pempton, Colney, Yatt, or Catkin: Priscilla Graves and

Nataly: the Rev. Septimus; Cormyn and his wife: young Dudley Sowerby and Iflutes: he has precision, as

naughty Fredi said, when some one spoke of expression. In the course of the evening, Lady Grace, perhaps:

"Fenellan," said Mr. Radnor, emboldened to judge hopefully of his fortunes by mere pressure of the thought

of Dartrey's, "I put it to you: would you say, that there is anything this time behind your friend Carling's

Although it had not been phrased as a report, Mr. Fenellan's answering look and gesture, and a run of

indiscriminate words, enrolled it in that form, greatly to the inspiriting of Mr. Radnor.

Old Veuve in one, to the soul of Old Veuve in the other, they recalled a past day or two, touched the skies;

and merriment or happiness in the times behind them held a mirror to the present: or the hour of the reverse

of happiness worked the same effect by contrast: so that notions of the singular election of us by Dame

Fortune, sprang like vinous bubbles. For it is written that, however powerful you be, you shall not take the

Winegod on board to entertain him as a simple passenger; and you may captain your vessel, you may pilot it,

and keep to your reckonings, and steer for all the ports you have a mind to, even to doing profitable exchange

with Armenian and Jew, and still you shall do the something more, which proves that the Winegod is on

Mr. Fenellan was unused to the copious outpouring of Victor Radnor's confidences upon his domestic affairs;

and the unwonted excitement of Victor's manner of speech would have perplexed him, had there not been

Payment for the turtle and the bottles of Old Veuve was performed apart with Benjamin, while Simeon

Fenellan strolled out of the house, questioning a tumbled mind as to what description of suitable

entertainment, which would be dancing and flirting and fallallery in the season of youth, London City could

provide near meridian hours for a man of middle age carrying his bottle of champagne, like a guest of an old

fashioned weddingbreakfast. For although he could stand his wine as well as his friend, his friend's potent

capacity martially after the feast to buckle to business at a sign of the clock, was beyond him. It pointed to

one of the embodied elements, hot from Nature's workshop. It told of the endurance of powers, that partly

explained the successful, astonishing career of his friend among a people making urgent, if unequal, demands

IN that nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, THE RAJAH IN LONDON (London,

Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the long wash of Pressmatter, the reflection not unknown

to philosophical observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an Oriental Princeproduced by his

observation of the march of London citizens Eastward at morn, Westward at eve, attributes their practice to a

survival of the Zoroastrian form of worship. His Minister, favourable to the people or for the sake of fostering

an idea in his Master's head, remarks, that they show more than the fidelity of the sunflower to her God. The

Rajah, it would appear, frowns interrogatively, in the princely fashion, accusing him of obscureness of

speech: princes and the louder members of the grey public are fraternally instant to spurn at the whip of

that which they do not immediately comprehend. It is explained by the Minister: not even the flower, he says,

would hold constant, as they, to the constantly unseena trebly cataphractic Invisible. The Rajah professes

curiosity to know how it is that the singular people nourish their loyalty, since they cannot attest to the

continued being of the object in which they put their faith. He is informed by his prostrate servant of a settled

habit they have of diligently seeking their Divinity, hidden above, below; and of copiously taking inside them

doses of what is denied to their external vision: thus they fortify credence chemically on an abundance of

meats and liquors; fire they eat, and they drink fire; they become consequently instinct with fire. Necessarily

therefore they believe in fire. Believing, they worship. Worshipping, they march Eastward at morn, Westward

at eve. For that way lies the key, this way the cupboard, of the supplies, their fuel.

According to Stage directions, THE RAJAH AND HIS MINISTER Enter a GinPalace. It is to witness a

On the step of the return to their Indian clime, they speak of the hatted sect, which is most, or most

commercially, succoured and fattened by our rule there: they wave adieu to the conquering Islanders, as to

The two are seen last on the deck of the vessel, in perusal of a medical pamphlet composed of statistics and

sketches, traceries, horrid blots, diagrams with numbers referring to notes, of the various maladies caused by

"But can they suffer so and live?" exclaims the Rajah, vexed by the physical sympathetic twinges which set

"Science," his Minister answers, "took them up where Nature, in pity of their martyrdom, dropped them.

They do not live; they are engines, insensible things of repairs and patches; insteamed to pursue their

infuriate course, to the one end of exhausting supplies for the renewing of them, on peril of an instant

The Rajah is of opinion, that he sails home with the key of the riddle of their power to vanquish. In some

apparent allusion to an Indian story of a married couple who successfully made their way, he accounts for

One would like to think of the lengthened tideflux of pedestrian citizens facing Southwestward, as being

drawn by devout attraction to our nourishing luminary: at the hour, mark, when the Norland cloudking, after

a day of wild invasion, sits him on his restful bank of blueish smacko'cheek red above Whitechapel, to spy

where his last puff of icy javelins pierces and dismembers the vapoury masses in cluster about the circle of

flame descending upon the greatest and most elevated of Admirals at the head of the Strand, with

illumination of smokeplumed chimneys, houseroofs, windowpanes, weather vanes, monument and

pedimental monsters, and omnibus umbrella. One would fain believe that they advance admiring; they are

assuredly made handsome by the beams. No longer mere concurrent atoms of the furnace of business (from

coaldust to sparks, rushing, as it were, on respiratory blasts of an enormous engine's centripetal and

centrifugal energy), their step is leisurely to meet the rosy Dinner, which is ever at see saw with the God of

Light in his fall; the mask of the noble human visage upon them is not roughened, as at midday, by those

knotted hard ridges of the scrambler's hand seen from forehead down to jaw; when indeed they have all the

appearance of sour scientific productions. And unhappily for the national portrait, in the Poem quoted, the

Rajah's Minister chose an hour between morning and meridian, or at least before an astonished luncheon had

come to composure inside their persons, for drawing his Master's attention to the quaint similarity of feature

in the units of the busy antish congregates they had travelled so far to visit and to study:

These Orientals should have seen them, with Victor Radnor among them, fronting the smoky splendours of

the sunset. In April, the month of piled and hurried cloud, it is a Rape of the Sabines overhead from all

quarters, either one of the winds brawnily larcenous; and London, smoking royally to the open skies, builds

images of a dusty epic fray for possession of the portly dames. There is immensity, swinging motion,

collision, dusky richness of colouring, to the sight; and to the mind idea. London presents it. If we can allow

ourselves a moment for not inquiring scrupulously (you will do it by inhaling the aroma of the ripe kitchen

hour), here is a noble harmony of heaven and the earth of the works of man, speaking a grander tongue than

barren sea or wood or wilderness. Just a moment; it goes; as, when a wellattuned barrelorgan in a street

has drawn us to recollections of the Opera or Italy, another harshly crashes, and the postman knocks at doors,

and perchance a costermonger cries his mash of fruit, a beggarwoman wails her hymn. For the pinched are

here, the dinnerless, the weedy, the guttergrowths, the forces repressing them. That grand tongue of the

giant City inspires none human to Bardic eulogy while we let those discords be. An embittered Muse of

Reason prompts her victims to the composition of the adulatory Essay and of the Leading Article, that she

may satiate an angry irony upon those who pay fee for their filling with the stuff. Song of praise she does not

permit. A moment of satisfaction in a striking picture is accorded, and no more. For this London, this

England, Europe, world, but especially this London, is rather a thing for hospital operations than for poetic

rhapsody; in aspect, too, streaked scarlet and pockpitted under the most cumbrous of jewelled tiaras; a

Titanic work of longtolerated pygmies; of whom the leaders, until sorely discomforted in body and doubtful

in soul, will give gold and labour, will impose restrictions upon activity, to maintain a conservatism of

diseases. Mind is absent, or somewhere so low down beneath material accumulations that it is inexpressive,

powerless to drive the ponderous bulk to such excisings, purgings, purifyings as mightas may, we will

suppose, render it acceptable, for a theme of panegyric, to the Muse of Reason; ultimately, with her consent,

But first there must be the cleansing. When Night has fallen upon London, the Rajah remarks:

His Minister (satirically, or in sympathetic Conservatism) would have them not to move on, that they may

preserve among beholders the impression of their handsome frontage. Night, however, will come; and they,

adoring the decent face, are moved on, made to expose what the Rajah sees. Behind his courteousness, he is

an antagonistic observer of his conquerors; he pushes his questions farther than the need for them; his

Minister the same; apparently to retain the discountenanced people in their state of exposure. Up to the time

of the explanation of the puzzle on board the departing vessel (on the road to Windsor, at the Premier's

reception, in the cell of the Police, in the presence of the Magistratewhose crack of a totally inverse

decision upon their case, when he becomes acquainted with the titles and station of these imputedly peccant,

refreshes them), they hold debates over the mysterious contrarieties of a people professing in one street what

they confound in the next, and practising by day a demureness that yells with the cat of the tiles at night.

Granting all that, it being a transient novelist's business to please the lightwinged hosts which live for the

hour, and give him his only chance of half of it, let him identify himself with them, in keeping to the quadrille

Clouds of high colour above London City are as the light of the Goddess to lift the angry heroic head over

human. They gloriously transfigure. A Murillo beggar is not more precious than sight of London in any of the

streets admitting coloured cloudscenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so speaks to us. And if haply down an

alley some olive mechanic of streetorgans has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing, they

strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the country though he was, would have been

the first to say it. He would indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a citizen of

London ardent for the clear air out of it, you have roused an orator; you have certainly fired a magazine, and

The figures of the hurtled fair ones in sky were wreathing Nelson's cocked hat when Victor, distinguishably

brightfaced amid a crowd of the irradiated, emerged from the tideway to cross the square, having thoughts

upon Art, which were due rather to the suggestive proximity of the National Gallery than to the Flemish

mouldings of cloudforms under Venetian brushes. His purchases of pictures had been his unhappiest

ventures. He had relied and reposed on the dicta of newspaper critics; who are sometimes unanimous, and are

then taken for guides, and are fatal. He was led to the conclusion that our modernlauded pictures do not

ripen. They have a chance of it, if abused. But who thinks of buying the abused? Exalted by the critics, they

have, during the days of Exhibition, a glow, a significance or a fun, abandoning them where examination is

close and constant, and the critic's trumpetnote dispersed to the thinness of the fee for his blowing. As to

foreign pictures, classic pictures, Victor had known his purse to leap for a Raphael with a history in stages of

descent from the Master, and critics to swarm: a Raphael of the dealers, exposed to be condemned by the

critics, universally derided. A real Raphael in your house is aristocracy to the rooftree. But the wealthy

trader will reach to title before he may hope to get the real Raphael or a Titian. Yet he is the one who would,

it may be, after enjoyment of his prize, bequeath it to the nation: PRESENTED TO THE NATION BY

VICTOR MONTGOMERY RADNOR. There stood the letters in gilt; and he had a thrill of his generosity;

for few were the generous acts he could not perform; and if an object haunted the deed, it came of his trader's

He revelled in benevolent projects of gifts to the nation, which would coat a sensitive name. Say, an

ornamental City Square, flowers, fountains, afternoon bands of music: comfortable seats in it, and a shelter,

and a ready supply of good cheap coffee or tea. Tobacco? why not rolls of honest tobacco! nothing so much

soothes the labourer. A volume of plans for the benefit of London smoked out of each ascending pile in his

brain. London is at night a moaning outcast round the policeman's legs. What of an allnightlong, cosy,

brightly lighted, odoriferous coffeesaloon for rich or poor, on the model of the hospitable Paduan? Owner

Dreams of this kind are taken at times by wealthy people as a cordial at the bar of benevolent intentions. But

Victor was not the man to steal his refreshments in that known style. He meant to make deeds of them, as far

as he could, considering their immense extension; and except for the sensitive social name, he was of

Turning to the steps of a chemist's shop to get a prescription made up for his Nataly's doctoring of her

domestics, he was arrested by a rap on his elbow; and no one was near; and there could not be a doubt of the

blowa sharp hard stroke, sparing the funnybone, but ringing. His head, at the punctilio bump, throbbed

responsively: owing to which or indifference to the prescription, as of no instant requirement, he pursued his

course, resembling mentally the wanderer along a misty beach, who bears cannon across the waters.

He certainly had felt it. He remembered the shock: he could not remember much of pain. How about

Very soon the riddle answered itself. He had come into view of the diminutive marble cavalier of the infantile

cerebellum: recollecting a couplet from the pen of the disrespectful Satirist Peter, he thought of a fall: his

All was explained save his consequent rightabout from the chemist's shop: and that belongs to the minor

involutions of circumstances and the will. It passed like a river's wrinkle. He read the placards of the Opera,

reminding himself of the day when it was the single Operahouse; and now we have twoor three. We have

also a distracting couple of Clowns and Pantaloons in our Pantomimes: though Colney says that the

multiplication of the pantaloon is a distinct advance to representative truthand bother Colney! Two

Columbines also. We forbear to speak of men, but where is the boy who can set his young heart upon two

Columbines at once! Victor felt the boy within him cold to both: and in his youth he had doated on the

solitary twirling spangled lovely Fairy. The tale of a delicate lady dancer leaping as the kernel out of a nut

from the arms of Harlequin to the legalized embrace of a wealthy brewer, and thenceforth living, by repute,

with unagitated legs, as holy a matron, despite her starry past, as any to be shown in a country breeding the

like abundantly, had always delighted him. It seemed a reconcilement of opposing stations, a defeat of

Puritanism. Ay, and poor women!women in the worser plight under the Puritan's eye. They may be erring

and good: yes, finding the man to lift them the one step up! Read the history of the error. But presently we

shall teach the Puritan to act by the standards of his religion. All is coming rightmust come right. Colney

Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan's hint regarding the designs of "Mrs. Burman."

His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of ScorchingGodiva to the gossips.

She would come out of it glorified. She would be reconciled with her family. With her story of her devotion

to the man loving her, the world would know her for the heroine she was: a born lady, in appearance and

manner an empress among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any court, before the sternest public. Mrs.

Burman had thrown her into temptation's way. It was a story to touch the heart, as none other ever written.

And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses enviousshe would inherit . . . he ran up an

arithmetical column, down to a line of figures in addition, during three paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan had

said of little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling as midsea foam. Happy he who wins her!

But she was one of the young women who are easily pleased and hardly enthralled. Her father strained his

mind for the shape of the man to accomplish the feat. Whether she had an ideal of a youth in her feminine

head, was beyond his guessing. She was not the damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical prince,

and try it upon all comers to discover him: as is done by some; excusably, if we would be just. Nesta was of

the elect, for whom excuses have not to be made. She would probably like a fluteplayer best; because her

father played the flute, and she loved himlaughably a little maiden's reason! Her father laughed at her.

Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see black balls raining, the narrow way between ducal

mansions offers prospect of the sweep of greensward, all but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the dance.

Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining way to an alliance with one of these great

surrounding houses; and he had a passion for the acquisition of money as a means. And it has to be

confessed, he had sacrificed in youth, a slice of his youth, to gain it without labourusually a costly

purchase. It had ended disastrously: or say, a running of the engine off the rails, and a speedy

reestablishment of traffic. Could it be a loss, that had led to the winning of his Nataly? Can we really loathe

the first of the steps when the one in due sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness? If we have been righted to

health by a medical draught, we are bound to be respectful to our drug. And so we are, in spite of Nature's

wry face and shiver at a mention of what we went through during those days, those horrible days:hide

The smothering of them from sight set them sounding: he had to listen. Colney Durance accused him of

entering into bonds with somebody's grandmother for the simple sake of browsing on her thousands: a picture

of himself too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of acceptance. Consequently he struck away to the

other extreme of those who have a choice in mixed motives: he protested that compassion had been the cause

of it. Looking at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human frailtyperhaps a wish to join the

ranks of the wealthycompassion for the woman as the principal motive. How often had she not in those old

days praised his generosity for allying his golden youth to her withered age Mrs. Burman's very words!

And she was a generous womanor had been: she was generous in saying that. Well, and she was generous

in having a wellborn wellbred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her companion, when it was a case

of need for the dear girl; and compassionately insisting, against remonstrances:they were spoken by him,

though they were but partial. How, then, had she becomeat least, how was it that she could continue to

behave as the vindictive Fury who persecuted remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells round

But at last she had come to charity, as he. could well believe. Not too late! Victor's feeling of gratitude to

Mrs. Burman assured him it was genuine because of his genuine conviction, that she had determined to end

her incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with him: and he had always been ready to "forget

and forgive." A truly beautiful old phrase! It thrilled one of the most susceptible of men.

His wellkept secret of the spacious countryhouse danced him behind a sober demeanour from one park to

another; and along beside the drive to view of his townhouseunbeloved of the inhabitants, although by

acknowledgment it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her sense of justice in depreciation, "good

accommodation." Nataly was at home, he was sure. Time to be dressing: sun sets at sixforty, he said, and

glanced at the stained West, with an accompanying vision of outspread primroses flooding banks of shadowy

Upon the opening of the door, there was a cascade of muslin downstairs. His darling Fredi stood out of it, a

"I must have it, my papa! unlock. I've been spying the bird on its hedgerow nest so long! And this morning,

my own dear cunning papa, weren't you as bare as winter twigs? `Tomorrow perhaps we will have a day in

the country.' To go and see the nest? Only, please, not a big one. A real nest; where mama and I can wear

dairymaid's hat and apron all daythe style you like; and strike roots. We've been torn away two or three

"Fixed, this time; nothing shall tear us up," said her father, moving on to the stairs, with an arm about her.

"How escape that rabble in England! as Colney says. It's a place for being quite independent of neighbours,

"And Fredi will have her horse, and mama her ponycarriage; and Fredi can have a swim every Summer

"A good long stretchfairish, fairish. Bit of a lake; bathingshed; the Na�ad's bower: pretty water to see."

"There's nothing he can conceal from his girl. Only now and then a little surprise."

"And his girl is off her head with astonishment. But tell me, who has been sharing the secret with you?"

"Fredi strikes home! And it is true, you dear; I must have a confidant: Simeon Fenellan."

He shook out a positive negative. "I leave Colney to his guesses. He'd have been prophesying fire to the

He spoke of the customary guests for Concert practice; the music, instrumental and vocal; quartet, duet, solo;

and advising the girl to be quick, as she had but twentyfive minutes, he went humming and trilling into his

Nesta signalled at her mother's door for permission to enter. She slipped in, saw that the maid was absent, and

"My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without speaking. You don't know for certain yet?"

Nataly's bosom sank. "Ah me! here's misery! I ought to have known. And too late now it has gone so far! But

She caught herself languishing at her toiletteglass, as if her beauty were at stake; and shut her eyelids

angrily. To be looking in that manner, for a mere suspicion, was too foolish. But Nesta's divinations were

targetarrows; they flew to the mark. Could it have been expected that Victor would ever do anything on a

small scale? O the dear little lost lost cottage! She thought of it with a strain of the arms of womanhood's

longing in the unblessed wife for a babe. For the secluded modest cottage would not rack her with the old

"My child, you won't possibly have time before the dinner hour," she said to Nesta, dismissing her and

Those bitter doubts of the sentiments of neighbours are an incipient dislike, when one's own feelings to the

neighbours are kind, could be affectionate. We are distracted, perverted, made strangers to ourselves by a

She heard his voice on a carol. Men do not feel this doubtful position as women must. They have not the

same to endure; the world gives them land to tread, where women are on breaking seas. Her Nesta knew no

more than the pain of being torn from a home she loved. But now the girl was older, and if once she had her

imagination awakened, her fearful directness would touch the spot, question, bring on the scene tocome,

necessarily tocome, dreaded much more than death by her mother. But if it might be postponed till the girl

was nearer to an age of grave understanding, with some knowledge of our world, some comprehension of a

He sang: he never acknowledged a trouble, he dispersed it; and in her present wrestle with the scheme of a

large country estate involving new intimacies, anxieties, the courtship of rival magnates, followed by the

wretched old cloud, and the imposition upon them to bear it in silence though they knew they could plead a

case, at least before charitable and discerning creatures or before heaven, the despondent lady could have

Who half so brilliantly!Depreciation of him, fetched up at a stroke the glittering armies of her

enthusiasm.He had proved it; he proved it daily in conflicts and in victories that dwarfed emotional

troubles like hers; yet they were something to bear, hard to bear, at times unbearable.

But those were times of weakness. Let anything be doubted rather than the good guidance of the man who

was her breath of life! Whither he led, let her go, not only submissively, exultingly.

Thus she thought, under pressure of the knowledge that, unless rushing into conflicts bigger than conceivable,

This was the prudent woman's clear deduction from the state wherein she found herself, created by the one

first great step of the mad woman. Her surrender then might be likened to the detachment of a flower on the

river's bank by swell of flood: she had no longer root of her own; away she sailed, through beautiful scenery,

with occasionally a crashing fall, a turmoil, emergence from a vortex, and once more the sunny whirling

surface. Strange to think, she had not since then power to grasp in her abstract mind a notion of stedfastness

But, say not the mad, say the enamoured woman. Love is a madness, having heaven's wisdom in ita spark.

But even when it is driving us on the breakers, call it love: and be not unworthy of it, hold to it. She and

Victor had drunk of a cup. The philtre was in her veins, whatever the directions of the rational mind.

Exulting or regretting, she had to do it, as one in the car with a racing charioteer. Or up beside a more than

Titanically audacious balloonist. For the charioteer is bent on a goal; and Victor's course was an ascension

from heights to heights. He had ideas, he mastered Fortune. He conquered Nataly and held her subject, in

being above his ambition; which was now but an occupation for his powers, while the aim of his life was at

the giving and taking of simple enjoyment. In spite of his fits of unreasonableness in the meansand the

woman loving him could trace them to a breadth of naturehis gentle good friendly innocent aim in life was

of this very simplest; so wonderful, by contrast with his powers, that she, assured of it as she was by

experience of him, was touched, in a transfusion of her feelings through lucent globes of admiration and of

tenderness, to reverence. There had been occasions when her wish for the whole world to have proof and

exhibition of his greatness, goodness, and simplicity amid his gifts, prompted her incitement of him to stand

forth eminently ("lead a kingdom," was the Phrase behind the curtain within her shy bosom); and it revealed

her to herself, upon reflection, as being still the Nataly who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.

And why not? Was that regretted? Far from it. In her maturity, the woman was unable to send forth any

dwelling thought or more than a flight of twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith

seemed to expunge near upon the half of her term of years. If it came to consideration of her family and the

family's opinion of her conduct, her judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam to a

Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country house, they might as well have remained at

Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places dear to them in turn. Such was the plain sense of the surface

question. And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering sensitiveness on her behalf, could not

see, that he threw her into situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head; where

one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the recollection of two years back, the word

Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the love of the place, with perpetual

apprehensions of having to leave it: alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the

haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing we are seen, and unaware awaited.

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she took strength from a handsome look of

resolution in the glass. She could always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening white flower over a more open white

waistcoat; and she was composed and uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. "A countryhouse? We go and see it tomorrow?"

"After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to return to."

"And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of the furniture."

"Well, dear, no: when the Slave of the Lamp takes to building, he does not run up cottages. And we did it

without magic, all in a year; which is quite as good as a magical trick in a night." He drew her close to him.

"You were two best of souls to keep from bothering me; and I might have had to fib; and we neither of us like

that." He noticed a sidling of her look. "More than the circumstances oblige:to be frank. But now we can

speak of them. Waitand the change comes; and opportunely, I have found. It's true we have waited long;

my darling has had her worries. However, it's here at last. Prepare yourself. I speak positively. You have to

brace up for one sharp twitchthe woman's portion! as Natata saysand it's over." He looked into her eyes

for comprehension; and not finding inquiry, resumed: "Just in time for the entry into Lakelands. With the

pronouncement of the decree, we present the licence . . . at an altar we've stood before, in spirit . . . one of the

"Count on my cousins, the Duvidney ladies. Then we can say, that those two good old spinsters are less

narrow than the Dreightons. I have to confess I rather think I was to blame for leaving Creckholt. Only, if I

see my girl wounded, I hate the place that did the mischief, You and Fredi will clap hands for the country

"Have you heard from her . . . of her . . . is it anything, Victor?" Nataly asked him shyly; with not much of

hope, but some readiness to be inflated. The prospect of an entry into the big new house, among a new

society, begirt by the old nightmares and fretting devils, drew her into staring daylight or furnacelight.

He answered: "Mrs. Burman has definitively decided. In pity of us?to be free herself?who can say!

She's a woman with a conscienceof a kind: slow, but it brings her to the point at last. You know her, know

her well. Fenellan has it from her lawyerher lawyer! a Mr. Carling; a thoroughly trustworthy man."

"Thoroughly to be trusted on serious matters. I understand that Mrs. Burman:her health is awful: yes, yes;

poor woman! poor woman! we feel for her:she has come to perceive her duty to those she leaves behind.

Consider: she has used the rod. She must be tired outif human. And she is. One remembers traits."

Victor sketched one or two of the traits allusively to the hearer acquainted with them. They received strong

colouring from midday's Old Veuve in his blood. His voice and words had a swing of conviction: they

The histrionic selfdeceiver may be a persuasive deceiver of another, who is again, though not ignorant of his

character, tempted to swallow the nostrums which have made so gallant a man of him: his imperceptible

sensible playing of the part, on a substratum of sincereness, induces fascinatingly to the like performance on

our side, that we may be armed as he is for enjoying the coveted reality through the partial simulation of

possessing it. And this is not a task to us when we have looked our actor in the face, and seen him bear the

look, knowing that he is not intentionally untruthful; and when we incline to be captivated by his rare

theatrical air of confidence; when it seems as an outside thought striking us, that he may not be altogether

deceived in the present instance; when suddenly an expectation of the thing desired is born and swims in a

credible featureless vagueness on a misty scene: and when we are being kissed and the blood is warmed. In

fine, here as everywhere along our history, when the sensations are spirited up to drown the mind, we become

driftmatter of tides, metal to magnets. And if we are women, who commonly allow the lead to men, getting

it for themselves only by snaky cunning or desperate adventure, credulitythe continued trust in the man

"But, Victor, I must ask," Nataly said: "you have it through Simeon Fenellan; you have not yourself received

"My knowledge of what she would do near the grave:poor soul, yes! I shall soon be hearing."

"We enter this place, my love, without any sort of ceremony. We live there independently, and we can: we

have quarters there for our friends. Our one neighbour is Londonthere! And at Lakelands we are able to

entertain London and wife;our friends, in short; with some, what we have to call, satellites. You inspect

the house and grounds tomorrowsure to be fair. Put aside all but the pleasant recollections of Craye and

Creckholt. We start on a different footing. Really nothing eau be simpler. Keeping your townhouse, you are

now and then in residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your set, teach them to feel the charm of country

life: we have everything about us; could have had our own milk and cream up to London the last two months.

Was it very naughty?I should have exploded my surprise! You will see, you will see tomorrow."

He answered: "Dartrey isyes, poor fellow!Dartrey is confident, from the yield of stones, that the value

of our claim counts in a number of millions. The same with the gold. But goldmines are lodgings, not

"Oh, Victor! if money! . . . But why did you say `poor fellow' of Dartrey Fenellan?"

"And Natata's chief hero on earth is not to be named a poor fellow," said he, after a negative of the head on a

Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually a lucky fellow; and he would have mentioned the

circumstance confided to him by Simeon, but for a downright dread of renewing his painful fit of envy. He

had also another, more distant, very faint idea, that it had better not be mentioned just yet, for a reason

He consulted his watch. The maid had come in for the robing of her mistress. Nataly's mind had turned to the

little country cottage which would have given her such great happiness. She raised her eyes to him; she could

not check their filling; they were like a river carrying moonlight on the smooth roll of a fall.

He loved the eyes, disliked the water in them. With an impatient, "There, there!" and a smart affectionate

look, he retired, thinking in our old satirical vein of the hopeless endeavour to satisfy a woman's mind

without the intrusion of hard material statements, facts. Even the best of women, even the most beautiful, and

in their moments of supremest beauty, have this gross ravenousness for facts. You must not expect to appease

them unless you administer solids. It would almost appear that man is exclusively imaginative and poetical;

and that his mate, the fair, the graceful, the bewitching, with the sweetest and purest of natures, cannot help

RATHER earlier in the afternoon of that day, Simeon Fenellan, thinking of the many things which are

nothing, and so melancholy for lack of amusements properly to follow Old Veuve, that he could ask himself

whether he had not done a deed of night, to be blinking at his fellowmen like an owl all mad for the

reveller's hoots and flights and mice and moony roundels behind his hypocritical judex air of moping

composure, chanced on Mr. Carling, the solicitor, where Lincoln's Inn pumps lawyers into Fleet Street

through the drainpipe of Chancery Lane. He was in the state of the wine when a shake will rouse the

sluggish sparkles to foam. Sight of Mrs. Burman's legal adviser had instantly this effect upon him: his

bubbling friendliness for Victor Radnor, and the desire of the voice in his bosom for ears to hear, combined

like the rush of two waves together, upon which he may be figured as the boat: he caught at Mr. Carling's

hand more heartily than their acquaintanceship quite sanctioned; but his grasp and his look of overflowing

were immediately privileged; Mr. Carling, enjoying this anecdotal gentleman's conversation as he did, liked

the warmth, and was flattered during the squeeze with a prospect of his wife and friends partaking of the fun

"I was telling my wife yesterday your story of the lady contrabandist: I don't think she has done laughing

Fenellan fluted: "Ah?" He had scent, in the eulogy of a story grown flat as Election hats, of a good sort of

man in the way of men, a step or two behind the man of the world. He expressed profound regret at not

Carling genially conceived a real gratification to be conferred on his wife. "Perhaps you will some day

"You lump the gold and make it current coin;says the blushing bride, who ought not to have delivered

herself so boldly, but she had forgotten her bashful part and spoilt the scene, though, luckily for the damsel,

her swain was a lover of nature, and finding her at full charge, he named the very next day of the year, and

"Tomorrow, then!" said Carling intrepidly, on a dash of enthusiasm, through a haggard thought of his wife

and the cook and the netting of friends at short notice. He urged his eagerness to ask whether he might indeed

"Tomorrow, halfpast seven: as for company to meet you, we will do what we can. You go Westward?"

"Orders given in Covent Garden, paint a picture for bachelors of the domestic Paradise an angel must help

them to enter! Ah, dear me! Is there anything on earth to compare with the pride of a virtuous life?"

"I was married at four and twenty," said Carling, as one taking up the expository second verse of a poem;

plain facts, but weighty and necessary: "my wife was in her twentieth year: we have five children; two sons,

three daughters, one married, with a baby. So we are grandfather and mother, and have never regretted the

"Think of it! Good luck and sagacity joined hands overhead on the day you proposed to the lady: and I'd say,

that all the credit is with her, but that it would seem to be at the expense of her sex."

"True of all good women! You encourage me, touching a matter of deep interest, not unknown to you. The

A comic severity in the tone of the correction was deferentially accepted by Fenellan.

"Pardon. She flies her flag, with her captain wanting; and she has, queerly, the right. So, then, the worthy

dame who receives no one, might be treated, it struck us, conversationally, as a respectable harbourhulk,

with more history than tophonours. But she has the indubitable legal right to fly themto proclaim it; for it

"Pin me to no significations, if you please, O shrewdest of the legal sort! I have wit enough to escape you

"Ah. You see, Mr. Carling, I cannot bring myself to rank her beside another lady, who has already claimed

the title of me: and you will forgive me if I say, that your word `good' has a look of being stuck upon the

features we know of her, like a coquette's naughty patch; or it's a jewel of an eye in an ebony idol: though I've

Carling was instigated by the praise he had bestowed on his wife to separate himself from a female pretender

"There was a fishfag of classic Billingsgate, who had broken her husband's nose with a sledgehammer fist,

and swore before the magistrate, that the man hadn't a crease to complain of in her character. We are

condemned, Mr. Carling, sometimes to suffer in the flesh for the assurance we receive of the inviolability of

"Character, yes, valuableI do wish you had named tonight for doing me the honour of dining with me!"

said the lawyer impulsively, in a rapture of the appetite for anecdotes. "I have a ripe Pichon Longueville, '65."

"A fine wine. Seductive to hear of. I dine with my friend Victor Radnor. And he knows wine.There are

"Between ourselves," Carling sank his tones to the indiscriminate, where it mingled with the roar of London.

"You do?" Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard enlightened liberal opinions regarding the sex. "Right!"

The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communication, up to the verge of the clearly audible: he spoke

"A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against her! She doesn't hear it often."

"A real service," Carling's voice deepened to the legal `without prejudice,'"I am bound to say ita service

"We can hardly examine . . . mysterious dispensations . . . here we are to make the best we can of it."

"For the creature Society's indebted to? True. And am I to think there's a body of legal gentlemen to join with

you, my friend, in founding an Institution to distribute funds to preach charity over the country, and win

compassion for her, as one of the principal persons of her time, that Society's indebted to for whatever it's

"All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that Establishments must have their sacrifices. Beware of

"Society prudently shuns the topic; and so'll we. For we might tell of one another, in a fit of distraction, that

t'other one talked of it, and we should be banished for an offence against propriety. You should read my

friend Durance's Essay on Society. Lawyers are a buttress of Society. But, come: I wager they don't know

Carling had a pleasant sense of escape, in not being personally asked to read the Essay, and not hearing that a

"Our fathers were friends; they served in the same regiment for years. I was in India when Victor Radnor

"In the interpretation of a rigid morality arming you legal gentlemen to make it so!"

"You may compare it to a rustic's finger on a fiddlestring, for the murdered notes you get out of the practical

"You are one of the giants to wield it, and feel humanly, when, by chance, down it comes on the foot an inch

off the line. Here's a peep of Old London; if the habit of old was not to wash windows. I like these old

"Hum," Carling hesitated. "I can remember when the dirt at the windows was appalling."

"Appealing to the same kind of stuff in the passing youngster's greenscum eye: it was. And there your Law

"Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom. But he will have the best of everything. A Roman�e! A

Musigny! Sip, my friend, you embrace the Goddess of your choice above. You are up beside her at a sniff of

that wine.And lo, venerable Drury! we duck through the court, reminded a bit by our feelings of our first

love, who hadn't the cleanest of faces or nicest of manners, but she takes her station in memory because we

Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs he did not share. He said urgently: "Understand me;

you speak of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe I have the greatest respect for Mr. Radnor's abilities. He is one of our

foremost men . . . proud of him. Mr. Radnor has genius; I have watched him; it is genius; he shows it in all he

does; one of the memorable men of our time. I can admire him, independent ofwell, misfortunes of that

kind . . . a mistaken early step. Misfortune, it is to be named. Between ourselveswe are men of the

worldif one could see the way! She occasionally . . . as I have told you. I have ventured suggestions. As I

"But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady doesn't release him and will keep his name, she might stop her cowardly

"Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout. I should not exactly say revengeful. We have to discriminate. I gather, that

her animus is, in all honesty, directed at theI quotestate of sin. We are mixed, you know."

The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap. "But, fifty thousand times more mixed, she might any

"She might try. Our Judges look suspiciously on longdelayed actions. And there are, too, women who

"Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead!well. But put a byword to Mother Nature about

the state of sin. Where, do you imagine, she would lay it? You'll say, that Nature and Law never agreed. They

"Moulding itself on her swelling proportions. My dear dear sir, the state of sin was the continuing to live in

defiance of, in contempt of, in violation of, in the total degradation of, Nature."

"He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, with pounds of barleysugar in her pocket;and she

already serving as a testvessel or mortar for awful combinations in druggery! Gilt widows are equal to

decrees of Fate to us young ones. Upon my word, the cleric who unites, and the Law that sanctions, they're

the criminals. Victor Radnor is the noblest of fellows, the very best friend a man can have. I will tell you: he

saved me, after I left the army, from living on the produce of my pen which means, if there is to be any

produce, the prostrating of yourself to the level of the round middle of the public: saved me from that! Yes,

Mr. Carling, I have trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and it is owing to Victor Radnor that I

can order my thoughts as an individual man again before I blacken paper. Owing to him, I have a tenderness

for mercenaries; having been one of them and knowing how little we can help it. He is an Olympianwho

thinks of them below. The lady also is an admirable woman at all points. The pair are a mated couple, such as

Carling replied: "A story under shadow of the Law, has generally two very distinct versions."

"Hear mine.And, by Jove! a runaway cab. No, all right. But a crazy cab it is, and fit to do mischief in

"There's the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me! One may be sure that the man for old Burgundy has it big and

sound, in spite of his legal practices; a dear good spherical fellow! Some day, we'll hope, you will be sitting

with us over a magnum of Victor Radnor's Roman�e Conti aged thirtyone: a wine, you'll say at the second

glass, High Priest for the celebration of the uncommon nuptials between the body and the soul of man."

"You hit me rightly," said Carling, tickled and touched; sensually excited by the bouquet of Victor Radnor's

hospitality and companionship, which added flavour to Fenellan's compliments. These came home to him

through his desire to be the `good spherical fellow'; for he, like modern diplomatists in the track of their

eminent Berlinese New Type of the time, put on frankness as an armour over wariness, holding craft in

reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means to discover that the coupling of his

native bias with his professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent,

even when he said: "You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the world to men of the

world; and I have not lost by it. I am Mrs. Burman Radnor's legal adviser: you are Mr. Victor Radnor's friend.

They are, as we see them, not on the best of terms. I would ratherat its lowest, as a matter of businessbe

known for having helped them to some kind of footing than send in a round bill to my clientor another. I

gain more in the end. Frankly, I mean to prove, that it's a lawyer's interest to be human."

"Because, now, see!" said Fenellan, "here's the case. Miss Natalia Dreighton, of a good Yorkshire familya

large one, reads an advertisement for the post of companion to a lady, and answers it, and engages herself,

previous to the appearance of the young husband. Miss Dreighton is one of the finest young women alive.

She has a glorious contralto voice. Victor and she are encouraged by Mrs. Burman to sing duets together.

Well? Why, Euclid would have theorem'd it out for you at a glance at the trio. You have only to look on

them, you chatter out your three Acts of a Drama without a stop. If Mrs. Burman cares to practise charity, she

has only to hold in her Furyforked tongue, or her Jarniman I think's the name . . ."

"Let her keep from striking, if she's Christian," pursued Fenellan, "and if kind, let her resume the name of her

first lord, who did a better thing for himself than for her, when he shook off his bars of bullion, to rise the

lighter, and left a wretched female soul below, with the devil's own testimony to her attractionsthousands

in the Funds, houses in the City. She threw the young couple together. And my friend Victor Radnor is of a

particularly inflammable nature. Imagine one of us in such a situation, Mr. Carling!"

"The dear fellow was as nigh death as a man can be and know the sweetness of a woman's call to him to

live.And here's London's garden of pines, bananas, oranges; all the droppings of the Hesperides here! We

"I feel such a spout of platitudes that I could out with a Leading Article on a sheet of paper on your back

while you're bending over the baskets. I seem to have got circularly round again to Eden when I enter a

garden. Only, here we have to pay for the fruits we pluck. Well, and just the same there; and no end to the

payment either. We're always paying! By the way, Mrs. Victor Radnor's dinnertable's a spectacle. Her taste

in flowers equals her lord's in wine. But age improves the wine and spoils the flowers, you'll say. Maybe

you're for arguing that lovely women show us more of the flower than the grape, in relation to the course of

time. I pray you not to forget the terrible intoxicant she is. We reconcile it, Mr. Carling, with the notion that

the grape's her spirit, the flower her body. Or is it the reverse? Perhaps an intertwining. But look upon

bouquets and clusters, and the idea of woman springs up at once, proving she's composed of them. I was

about to remark, that with deference to the influence of Mrs. Burman's legal adviser, an impenitent or

penitent sinner's pastor, the Reverend gentleman ministering to her spiritual needs, would presumptively

Carling murmured: "The Rev. Groseman Buttermore;" and did so for something of a cover, to continue a run

of internal reflections: as, that he was assuredly listening to vinous talk in the streets by day; which

impression placed him on a decorous platform above the amusing gentleman; to whom, however, he grew

cordial, in recognizing consequently, that his exuberant flow could hardly be a mask; and that an indication

here and there of a trap in his talk, must have been due rather to excess of wariness, habitual in the mind of a

longheaded man, whose incorrigibly impulsive fits had necessarily to be rectified by a vigilant dexterity.

"Buttermore!" ejaculated Fenellan: "Groseman Buttermore! Mrs. Victor's Father Confessor is the Rev.

Septimus Barmby. Groseman ButtermoreSeptimus Barmby. Is there anything in names? Truly, unless

these clerical gentlemen take them up at the crossing of the roads long after birth, the names would appear the

active parts of them, and themselves mere marching supports, like the bearers of street

placardadvertisements. Now, I know a Septimus Barmby, and you a Groseman Buttermore; and beyond the

fact that Reverend starts up before their names without mention, I wager it's about all we do know of them.

"My respect for the cloth is extreme." Carling's short cough prepared the way for deductions. "Between

Fenellan eyed benevolently the worthy attorney, whose innermost imp burst out periodically, like a Dutch

clock sentry, to trot on his own small grounds for thinking himself of the community of the men of the

world. "You lawyers dress in another closet," he said. "The Rev. Groseman has the ear of the lady?"

"Listens to him, listens to me, listens to Jarniman; and we neither of us guide her. She's very curiousa

study. You think you know hernext day she has eluded you. She's emotional, she's hard; she's a woman,

she's a stone. Anything you like; but don't count on her. And another thingI'm bound to say it of myself,"

Carling claimed close hearing of Fenellan over a shelf of saladstuff, "no one who comes near her has any

"Probably you mix cream in your salad of the vinegar and oil," said Fenellan. "Try jelly of mutton."

"You give me a new idea. Latterly, fond as I am of salads, I've had rueful qualms. We'll try it."

"And pretty pastry. I said, Cordon bleu. The miracle is, it's a woman that Victor Radnor has trained: French,

but a woman; devoted to him, as all who serve him are. Do I say `but' a woman? There's not a Frenchman

alive to match her. Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended; and may he wait long!"

Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a flutter of real envy be seen. "My wife would like to

meet such a Frenchwoman. It must be a privilege to dine with himto know him. I know what he has done

for English Commerce, and to build a colossal fortune: genius, as I said: and his donations to Institutions.

Odd, to read his name and Mrs. Burman Radnor's at separate places in the lists! Well, we'll hope. It's a case

"A friend of mine, spiced with cynic, declares that there's always an amicable way out of a dissension, if we

Carling spied for a trap in the citation of Lupus and Vulpus; he saw none, and named the square of his

residence on the great Russell property, and the number of the house, the hour of dinner next day. He then

hung silent, breaking the pause with his hand out and a sharp "Well?" that rattled a whirligig sound in his

head upward. His leave of people was taken in this laughing falsetto, as of one affected by the curious end

Fenellan thought of him for a moment or two, that he was a better than the common kind of lawyer; who

doubtless knew as much of the wrong side of the world as lawyers do, and held his knowledge for the being a

man of the world:as all do, that have not Alpine heights in the mind to mount for a look out over their own

and the world's pedestrian tracks. I could spot the lawyer in your composition, my friend, to the exclusion of

the man, he mused. But you're right in what you mean to say of yourself; you're a good fellow, for a lawyer,

NESTA read her mother's face when Mrs. Victor entered the drawingroom to receive the guests. She saw a

smooth fair surface, of the kind as much required by her father's eyes as innocuous air by his nostrils: and it

was honest skin, not the deceptive feminine veiling, to make a dear man happy over his volcano. Mrs. Victor

was to meet the friends with whom her feelings were at home, among whom her musical gifts gave her

station: they liked her for herself; they helped her to feel at home with herself and be herself: a rarer condition

with us all than is generally supposed. So she could determine to be cheerful in the anticipation of an evening

that would at least be restful to the outworn sentinel nerve of her heart, which was perpetually alert and

signalling to the great organ; often colouring the shows and seems of adverse things for an apeing of reality

with too cruel a resemblance. One of the scraps of practical wisdom gained by hardened sufferers is, to keep

from spying at horizons when they drop into a pleasant dingle. Such is the comfort of it, that we can dream,

and lull our fears, and half think what we wish: and it is a heavenly truce with the fretful mind divided from

Nesta wondered at her mother's complacent questions concerning this Lakelands: the house, the county, the

kind of people about, the features of the country. Physically unable herself to be regretful under a burden

three parts enrapturing her, the girl expected her mother to display a shadowy vexation, with a proud word or

two, that would summon her thrilling sympathy in regard to the fourth part: namely, the aristocratic iciness of

country magnates, who took them up and cast them off; as they had done, she thought, at Craye Farm and at

Creckholt: she remembered it, of the latter place, wincingly, insurgently, having loved the dear home she had

been expelled from by the pride of the frosty surrounding peopleor no, not all, but some of them. And what

Striking for a reason, her inexperience of our modern England, supplemented by readings in the England of a

preceding generation, had hit on her father's profession of merchant. It accounted to her for the behaviour of

the haughty territorial and titled families. But certain of the minor titles headed City Firms, she had heard;

certain of the families were avowedly commercial. "They follow suit," her father said at Creckholt, after he

had found her mother weeping, and decided instantly to quit and fly once more. But if they followed suit in

such a way, then Mr. Durance must be right when he called the social English the most sheepy of

sheep:and Nesta could not consent to the cruel verdict, she adored her compatriots. Incongruities were

pacified for her by the suggestion of her quick wits, that her father, besides being a merchant, was a

successful speculator; and perhaps the speculator is not liked by merchants; or they were jealous of him; or

She pardoned them with some tenderness, on a suspicion that a quaint old highfrilled bleached and puckered

Puritanical rectitude (her thoughts rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of

gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthusiast for things old English. She was

consciously ahead of them in the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a

beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with the natives in India,

and his Railways in South America, his establishment of Insurance Offices, which were Savings Banks, and

the Stores for the dispensing of sound goods to the poor, attested it. O and he was hospitable, the kindest,

helpfullest of friends, the dearest, the very brightest of parents: he was his girl's playmate. She could be critic

of him, for an induction to the loving of him more justly: yet if he had an excessive desire to win the esteem

of people, as these keen young optics perceived in him, he strove to deserve it; and no one could accuse him

of laying stress on the benefits he conferred. Designedly, frigidly to wound a man so benevolent, appeared to

her as an incomprehensible baseness. The dropping of acquaintanceship with him, after the taste of its

privileges, she ascribed, in the void of any better elucidation, to a mania of aristocratic conceit. It drove her,

despite her youthful contempt of politics, into a Radicalism that could find food in the epigrams of Mr.

Colney Durance, even when they passed her understanding; or when he was not too distinctly seen by her to

be shooting at all the parties of her beloved England, beneath the wicked semblance of shielding each by

The young gentleman introduced to the Radnor Concert parties by Lady Grace Halley as the Hon. Dudley

Sowerby, had to bear the sins of his class. Though he was tall, straight featured, correct in costume,

appearance, deportment, second son of a religious earl and no scandal to the parentage, he was less noticed by

Nesta than the elderly and the commoners. Her father accused her of snubbing him. She reproduced her

famous copy of the sugared acid of Mr. Dudley Sowerby's closed mouth: a sort of sneer in meekness, as of

humility under legitimate compulsion; deploring Christianly a pride of race that stamped it for this cowled

exhibition: the wonderful mimicry was a flash thrown out by a born mistress of the art, and her mother was

constrained to laugh, and so was her father; but he wilfully denied the likeness. He charged her with

encouraging Colney Durance to drag forth the sprig of nobility, in the nakedness of evicted shellfish, on

themes of the peril to England, possibly ruin, through the loss of that ruling initiative formerly possessed, in

the days of our glory, by the titular nobles of the land. Colney spoke it effectively, and the Hon. Dudley's

expressive lineaments showed print of the heaving word Alas, as when a target is penetrated centrally. And

he was not a particularly dull fellow "for his class and country," Colney admitted; adding: "I hit his thought

and out he came." One has, reluctantly with Victor Radnor, to grant, that when a man's topmost unspoken

thought is hit, he must be sharp on his guard to keep from coming out:we have won a right to him.

"Only, it's too bad; it's a breach of hospitality," Victor said, both to Nesta and to Nataly, alluding to several

instances of Colney's ironic handling of their guests, especially of this one, whom Nesta would attack, and

They were alive at a signal to protect the others. Miss Priscilla Graves, an eater of meat, was ridiculous in her

ant'alcoholic exclusiveness and scorn: Mr. Pempton, a drinker of wine, would laud extravagantly the more

transparent purity of vegetarianism. Dr. Peter Yatt jeered at globules: Dr. John Cormyn mourned over human

creatures treated as cattle by big doses. The Rev. Septimus Barmby satisfactorily smoked: Mr. Peridon traced

mortal evil to that act. Dr. Schlesien had his German views, Colney Durance his ironic, Fenellan his fanciful

and freelance. And here was an optimist, there a pessimist; and the rank Radical, the rigid Conservative,

were not wanting. All of them were pointedly opposed, extraordinarily for so small an assembly: absurdly, it

might be thought: but these provoked a kind warm smile, with the exclamation: "They are dears!" They were

the dearer for their fads and foibles. Music harmonized them. Music, strangely, put the spell on Colney

Durance, the sayer of bitter things, manufacturer of prickly balls, in the form of Discord's apples: of whom

Fenellan remarked, that he took to his music like an angry little boy to his barleysugar, with a growl and a

grunt. All these diverse friends could meet and mix in Victor's Concertroom with an easy homely

recognition of one another's musical qualities, at times enthusiastic; and their natural divergencies and

occasional clashes added a salient tastiness to the group: of whom Nesta could say: "Mama, was there ever

such a collection of dear good souls with such contrary minds?" Her mother had the deepest of reasons for

loving them, so as not to wish to see the slightest change in their minds, that the accustomed features making

her nest of homeliness and real peace might be retained, with the humour of their funny silly antagonisms and

the subsequent march in concord; excepting solely as regarded the perverseness of Priscilla Graves in her

open contempt of Mr. Pempton's innocent two or three wineglasses. The vegetarian gentleman's politeness

forbore to direct attention to the gobbets of meat Priscilla consumed, though he could express disapproval in

general terms; but he entertained sentiments as warlike to the lady's habit of "drinking the blood of animals."

The mockery of it was, that Priscilla liked Mr. Pempton and admired his violoncelloplaying, and he was

unreserved in eulogy of her person and her pure soprano tones. Nataly was a poetic matchmaker. Mr.

Peridon was intended for Mademoiselle de Seilles, Nesta's young French governess; a lady of a courtly

bearing, with placid speculation in the eyes she cast on a foreign people, and a voluble muteness shadowing

The one person among them a little out of tune with most, was Lady Grace Halley. Nataly's provincial

gentlewoman's traditions of the manners indicating conduct, reproved unwonted licences assumed by Lady

Grace; who, in allusion to Hymen's weaving of a cousinship between the earldom of Southweare and that of

Cantor, of which Mr. Sowerby sprang, set her mouth and fan at work to delineate total distinctions, as it were

from the egg to the empyrean. Her stature was rather short, all of it conversational, at the eyebrows, the

shoulders, the fingertips, the twisting shape; a ballerina's expressiveness; and her tongue dashed half

sentences through and among these hieroglyphs, loosely and funnily candid. Anybody might hear that she

had gone gambling into the City, and that she had got herself into a mess, and that by great good luck she had

come across Victor Radnor, who, with two turns of the wrist, had plucked her out of the mire, the miraculous

man! And she had vowed to him, never again to run doing the like without his approval. The cause of her

having done it, was related with the accompaniments; brows twitching, flitting smiles, shrugs, pouts, shifts of

posture: she was married to a centaur; out of the saddle a man of wood, "an excellent man." For the not

colloquial do not commit themselves. But one wants a little animation in a husband. She called on

bellmotion of the head to toll forth the utter nightcap negative. He had not any: out of the saddle, he was

asleep:"next door to the Last Trump," Colney Durance assisted her to describe the soundest of sleep in a

husband, after wooing her to unbosom herself. She was awake to his guileful arts, and sailed along with him,

hailing his phrases, if he shot a good one; prankishly exposing a flexible nature, that took its holiday thus in a

grinding world, among maskers, to the horrification of the prim. So to refresh ourselves, by having publicly a

hipbath in the truth while we shock our hearers enough to be discredited for what we reveal, was a

dexterous merry twist, amusing to her; but it was less a cynical malice than her nature that she indulged. "A

woman must have some excitement." The most innocent appeared to her the Stock Exchange. The opinions

Colney helped her now and then to step the trifle beyond her stride, but if he was humorous, she forgave; and

if together they appalled the decorous, it was great gain. Her supple person, pretty lips, the style she had, gave

a pass to the wondrous confidings, which were for masculine ears, whatever the sex. Nataly might share in

them, but women did not lead her to expansiveness; or not the women of the contracted class: Miss Graves,

Mrs. Cormyn, and others at the Radnor Concerts. She had a special consideration for Mademoiselle de

Seilles, owing to her exquisite French, as she said; and she may have liked it, but it was the young

Frenchwoman's air of high breeding that won her esteem. Girls were Spring frosts to her. Fronting Nesta, she

put on her printed smile, or woodcut of a smile, with its label of indulgence; except when the girl sang.

Music she loved. She said it was the saving of poor Dudley. It distinguished him in the group of the noble

Evangelical Cantor Family; and it gave him a subject of assured discourse in company; and oddly, it

contributed to his comelier air. Flute in hand, his mouth at the blowstop was relieved of its pained updraw

by the form for puffing; he preserved a gentlemanly high figure in his exercises on the instrument, out of ken

of all likeness to the urgent insistancy of Victor Radnor's punctuating trunk of the puffing frame at almost

every baran Apollo brilliancy in energetic pursuit of the nymph of sweet sound. Too methodical one, too

fiery the other. In duets of Hauptmann's, with Nesta at the piano, the contrast of dull smoothness and

overstressed significance was very noticeable beside the fervent accuracy of her balanced fingering; and as

she could also flute, she could criticize; though latterly the flute was boxed away from lips that had devoted

themselves wholly to song: song being one of the damsel's present pressing ambitions. She found nothing to

correct in Mr. Sowerby, and her father was open to all the censures; but her father could plead vitality,

passion. He held his performances cheap after the vehement display; he was a happy listener, whether to the

babble of his "dear old Corelli," or to the majesty of the rattling heavens and swaying forests of Beethoven.

His air of listening was a thing to see; it had a look of disembodiment; the sparkle conjured up from deeps,

and the life in the sparkle, as of a soul at holiday. Eyes had been given this man to spy the pleasures and

reveal the joy of his pasture on them: gateways to the sunny within, issues to all the outer Edens. Few of us

possess that double significance of the pure sparkle. It captivated Lady Grace. She said a word of it to

Fenellan: "There is a man who can feel rapture!" He had not to follow the line of her sight: she said so on a

previous evening, in a similar tone; and for a woman to repeat herself, using the very emphasis, was quaint.

She could feel rapture; but her features and limbs were in motion to designate it, between simply and

wilfully; she had the instinct to be dimpling, and would not for a moment control it, and delighted in its

effectiveness: only when observing that winged sparkle of eyes did an idea of envy, hardly a consciousness,

inform her of being surpassed; and it might be in the capacity to feel besides the gift to express. Such a

reflection relating to a man, will make women mortally sensible that they are the feminine of him.

And it was true, that the figure of a mother, not pretending to the father's vividness, eclipsed it somewhat in

their child. The mother gave richness of tones, hues and voice, and stature likewise, and the thick brown

locks, which in her own were threads of gold along the brush from the temples: she gave the girl a certain

degree of the composure of manner which Victor could not have bestowed; she gave nothing to clash with his

genial temper; she might be supposed to have given various qualities, moral if you like. But vividness was

Lady Grace's admirable meteor of the hour: she was unable to perceive, so as to compute, the value of

obscurer lights. Under the charm of Nataly's rich contralto during a duet with Priscilla Graves, she

gesticulated ecstasies, and uttered them, and genuinely; and still, when reduced to meditations, they would

have had no weight, they would hardly have seemed an apology for language, beside Victor's gaze of

Her anxieties were at once running about to gather provisions for the baskets. She spoke of them at night. But

Victor had already put the matter in the hands of Madame Callet; and all that could be done, would be done

by Armandine, he knew. "If she can't muster enough at home, she'll be off to her Piccadilly shop by seven

Nataly was reposing on the thought that they were her friends, when Victor mentioned his having in the

afternoon despatched a note to his relatives, the Duvidney ladies, inviting them to join him at the station

tomorrow, for a visit of inspection to the house of his building on his new estate. He startled her. The

Duvidney ladies were, to his knowledge, of the order of the fragile minds which hold together by the cement

of a common trepidation for the support of things established, and have it not in them to be able to recognize

the unsanctioned. Good women, unworldly of the world, they were perforce harder than the world, from

He answered: "They may have gone back to Tunbridge Wells. By the way, they have a society down there I

want for Fredi. Sure, do you say, my dear? Perfectly sure. But the accumulation of invitations and refusals in

She was used to the long reaches of his forecasts, his burning activity on a project; she found it idle to speak

her thought, that his ingenuity would have been needless in a position dictated by plain prudence, and so

They talked of Mrs. Burman until she had to lift a prayer to be saved from darker thoughts, dreadfully

prolific, not to be faced. Part of her prayer was on behalf of Mrs. Burman, for life to be extended to her, if the

poor lady clung to lifeif it was really humane to wish it for her: and heaven would know: heaven had

ONE may not have an intention to flourish, and may be pardoned for a semblance of it, in exclaiming,

The conveyances from the railway station drew up on a rise of road fronting an undulation, where our modern

English architect's fantasia in crimson brick swept from central gables to flying wings, over pents, crooks,

curves, peaks, cowled porches, balconies, recesses, projections, away to a red village of stables and

dependent cottages; harmonious in irregularity; and coloured homely with the greensward about it, the pines

beside it, the clouds above it. Not many palaces would be reckoned as larger. The folds and swells and stream

of the building along the roll of ground, had an appearance of an enormous banner on the wind. Nataly

looked. Her next look was at Colney Durance. She sent the expected nods to Victor's carriage. She would

have given the whole prospect for the covering solitariness of her chamber. A multitude of clashing

sensations, and a throatthickening hateful to her, compelled her to summon so as to force herself to feel a

groundless anger, directed against none, against nothing, perfectly crazy, but her only resource for keeping

Victor was like a swimmer in morning sea amid the exclamations encircling him. He led through the straight

passage of the galleried hall, offering two fair landscapes at front door and at back, down to the lake, Fredi's

lake; a good oblong of water, notable in a district not abounding in the commodity. He would have it a

feature of the district; and it had been deepened and extended; up rose the springs, many ran the ducts. Fredi's

pretty little bathshed or bower had a space of marble on the threefeet shallow it overhung with a shade of

carved woodwork; it had a divingboard for an eightfeet plunge; a punt and small rowboat of elegant build

hard by. Green ran the banks about, and a beechwood fringed with birches curtained the Northward length:

morning sun and evening had a fair face of water to paint. Saw man ever the like for pleasing a poetical

damsel? So was Miss Fredi, the coldest of the party hitherto, and dreaming a preference of "old places" like

Creckholt and Craye Farm, "captured to be enraptured," quite according to man's ideal of his beneficence to

the sex. She pressed the hand of her young French governess Louise de Seilles. As in everything he did for

his girl, Victor pointed boastfully to his forethought of her convenience and her tastes: the pinepanels of the

interior, the shelves for her books, pegs to hang her favourite drawings, and the couchbunk under a window

to conceal the summerly recliner while throwing full light on her book; and the hearthsquare for logs, when

she wanted fire: because Fredi bathed in any weather: the oaken towelcoffer; the woodcarvings of doves,

tits, fishes; the rod for the flowered silken hangings she was to choose, and have shy odalisque peeps of

"Fredi's Na�ad retreat, when she wishes to escape Herr Str�uscher or Signor Ruderi," said Victor, having his

grateful girl warm in an arm; "and if they head after her into the water, I back her to leave them puffing; she's

a dolphin. That water has three springs and gets all the drainings of the upland round us. I chose the place

"But, excellent man! what do you not love?" said Lady Grace, with the timely hit upon the obvious, which

"What does?" was eagerly asked by the wife of the hom*opathic Dr. John Cormyn, a sentimental lady beset

But she heard Colney speak of a positive remedy, more immediately effective than an abjuration of potatoes

and sugar. She was obliged by her malady to listen, although detesting the irreverent ruthless man, who could

direct expanding frames, in a serious tone, to love; love everybody, everything; violently and universally

love; and so without intermission pay out the fat created by a rapid assimilation of nutriment. Obeseness is

the most sensitive of our ailments: probably as being aware, that its legitimate appeal to pathos is ever

smothered in its puddingbed of the grotesque. She was pained, and showed it, and was ashamed of herself

"Our host is an instance in proof," Colney said. He waved hand at the house. His meaning was hidden;

evidently he wanted victims. Sight of Lakelands had gripped him with the fell satiric itch; and it is a passion

to sting and tear, on rational grounds. His face meanwhile, which had points of the handsome, signified a

smile asleep, as if beneath a cloth. Only those who knew him well were aware of the clawlike alertness

Admiration was the common note, in the various keys. The station selected for the Southeastward aspect of

the darkred gabled pile on its white shellterrace, backed by a plantation of tall pines, a mounded and

fullplumed company, above the left wing, was admired, in files and in volleys. Marvellous, effectively

miraculous, was the tale of the vow to have the great edifice finished within one year: and the strike of

workmen, and the friendly colloquy with them, the good reasoning, the unanimous return to duty; and the

doubling, the trebling of the number of them; and the most glorious of sightsthe grand old English working

with a will! as Englishmen do when they come at last to heat; and they conquer, there is then nothing that

they cannot conquer. So the conqueror said.And admirable were the conservatories running three long

lines, one from the drawingroom, to a central dome for tropical growths. And the parterres were admired;

also the newlyplanted Irish junipers bounding the Westwalk; and the three tiers of stately descent from the

three green terrace banks to the grassy slopes over the lake. Again the lake was admired, the house admired.

Off we go to the kitchengarden. There the admiration is genial, practical. We admire the extent of the beds

marked out for asparagus, and the French disposition of the planting at wide intervals; and the French system

of training peach, pear, and plum trees on the walls to win length and catch sun, we much admire. We admire

the gardener. We are induced temporarily to admire the French people. They are sagacious in fruitgardens.

They have not the English Constitution, you think rightly; but in fruitgardens they grow for fruit, and not, as

Victor quotes a friend, for wood, which the valiant English achieve. We hear and we see examples of

sagacity; and we are further brought round to the old confession, that we cannot cook; Colney Durance has us

there; we have not studied herbs and savours; and so we are shocked backward step by step until we retreat

precipitately into the nooks where waxen tapers, carefully tended by writers on the Press, lightup mysterious

images of our national selves for admiration. Something surely we do, or we should not be where we are. But

what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course) which others cannot do? Colney asks; and he excludes cricket

An acutely satiric man in an English circle, that does not resort to the fist for a reply to him, may almost

satiate the excessive fury roused in his mind by an illogical people of a provocative prosperity, mainly

tongueless or of leaden tongue above the pressure of their necessities, as he takes them to be. They give him

so many opportunities. They are angry and helpless as the log hissing to the saw. Their instinct to make use

of the downright in retort, restrained as it is by a buttoned coat of civilization, is amusing, inviting. Colney

Durance allured them to the quag's edge and plunged them in it, to writhe patriotically; and although it may

be said, that they felt their situation less than did he the venom they sprang in his blood, he was cruel; he

caused discomfort. But these good friends about him stood for the country, an illogical country; and as he

could not well attack his host Victor Radnor, an irrational man, he selected the abstract entity for the

discharge of his honest spite. The irrational friend was deeper at the source of his irritation than the illogical

old motherland. This house of Lakelands, the senselessness of his friend in building it and designing to live in

it, after experiences of an incapacity to stand in a serene contention with the world he challenged, excited

Colney's wasp. He was punished, half way to frenzy behind his placable demeanour, by having Dr. Schlesien

for chorus. And here again, it was the unbefitting, not the person, which stirred his wrath. A German on

English soil should remember the dues of a guest. At the same time, Colney said things to snare the

acclamation of an observant gentleman of that race, who is no longer in his first enthusiasm for English beef

and the complexion of the women. "Ah, ya, it is true, what you say: `The English grow as fast as odders, but

they grow to horns instead of brains.' They are Bull. Quaat true." He bellowed on a laugh the last half of the

Colney marked him. His encounters with Fenellan were enlivening engagements and left no malice; only a

regret, when the fencing passed his guard, that Fenellan should prefer to flash for the minute. He would have

met a pert defender of England, in the person of Miss Priscilla Graves, if she had not been occupied with

observation of the bearing of Lady Grace Halley toward Mr. Victor Radnor; which displeased her on behalf

of Mrs. Victor; she was besides hostile by race and class to an aristocratic assumption of licence. Sparing

Colney, she with some scorn condemned Mr. Pempton for allowing his country to be ridiculed without a

word. Mr. Pempton believed that the Vegetarian movement was more progressive in England than in other

lands, but he was at the disadvantage with the fair Priscilla, that eulogy of his compatriots on this account

would win her coldest approval. "Satire was never an argument," he said, too evasively.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby received the meed of her smile, for saying in his manyfathom bass, with an eye

The announcement of luncheon, by Victor's butler Arlington, opportunely followed and freighted the remark

with a happy recognition of that which comes to us from the hands of conquerors. Dr. Schlesien himself, no

antagonist to England, but like Colney Durance, a critic, speculated in view of the spread of picnic provision

beneath the great glass dome, as to whether it might be, that these English were on another start out of the

dust in vigorous commercial enterprise, under leadership of one of their chance masterly mindsmerchant,

in this instance: and he debated within, whether Genius, occasionally developed in a surprising superior

manner by these haphazard English, may not sometimes wrest the prize from Method; albeit we count for the

long run, that Method has assurance of success, however late in the race to set forth.

Luncheon was a merry meal, with Victor and Nataly for host and hostess; Fenellan, Colney Durance, and

Lady Grace Halley for the talkers. A gusty bosom of sleet overhung the dome, rattled on it, and rolling

Westward, became a radiant mountainland, partly worthy of Victor's phrase: "A range of Swiss Alps in air."

And Fenellan improved on him: "Or a magnified Bench of Judges at the trial of your c�rulean Phryne."

But Victor and Lady Grace rejected any play of conceits upon nature. Violent and horrid interventions of the

counterfeit, such mad similes appeared to them, when pure coin was offered. They loathed the Rev. Septimus

Barmby for proclaiming, that he had seen "Chapters of Hebrew History in the grouping of clouds."

His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Nesta. The clerical gentleman's voice was of a depth to claim for

it the profoundest which can be thought or uttered; and Nesta's tender youth had taken so strong an

impression of sacredness from what Fenellan called "his chafer tones," that her looks were often given him in

gratitude, for the mere sound. Nataly also had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice coming from

such a garb. Consequently, whenever Fenellan and Colney were at him, drawing him this way and that for

utterances cathedral in sentiment and sonorousness, these ladies shed protecting beams; insomuch that he was

inspired to the agreeable conceptions whereof frequently rash projects are an issue.

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched merchants, it appeared; a snippet or

two of the fringe of aristocracy lay here and there among them; and one racyof thesoil old son of Thanes,

having the manners proper to last century's yeoman. Mr. Pempton knew something of this quaint Squire of

Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by name; a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the

ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you

anywhere, on any occasion. To have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity

of the country, was rare. Victor exclaimed "Come!" in ravishment over the picturesqueness of a neighbour

carrying imagination away to the founts of England; and his look at Nataly proposed. Her countenance was

inapprehensive. He perceived resistance, and said: "I have met two or three of them in the train: agreeable

men: Gladding, the banker; a general Fanning; that man Blathenoy, great billbroker. But the fact is, close on

London, we're independent of neighbours; we mean to be. Lakelands and London practically join."

"You must expect to be invaded, sir," said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor shrugged: "We are pretty safe."

"The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is heard fingering the handle nigh

It struck on Nataly's heart. "So you will not let us be lonely here," she said to her guests.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations. Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at

"Don't imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours, in a house like this; and they have a

"No, nono, no!" Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened to things unclean, and royally

upraising them: in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter moods

of late. "No, but it's a rapture to breathe the air here!" His lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement

He spoke aside to Lady Grace: "The dear soul wants time to compose herself after a grand surprise."

"In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres . . . in all at present three hundred and seventy,

"Large enough; land paying as it doesthat is, not paying. We shall be having to gamble in the City

Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. The lady played it off in a shadowy pout and shrug

She said to Nataly: "Our place in Worcestershire is about half the size, if as much. Large enough when we're

not crowded out with gout and can open to no one. Some day you will visit us, I hope."

It was an overaccentuated response; unusual with this well bred woman; and a bit of speech that does not

flow, causes us to speculate. The lady resumed: "I value the favour. We're in a horseydoggyfoxy circle

Nataly smiled in vacuous kindness, at a loss for the retort of a compliment to a person she measured. Lady

Grace also was an amiable hostile reviewer. Each could see, to have cited in the other, defects common to the

lower species of the race, admitting a superior personal quality or two; which might be pleaded in

extenuation; and if the apology proved too effective, could be dispersed by insistance upon it, under an

implied appeal to benevolence. When we have not a liking for the creature whom we have no plain cause to

During the admiratory stroll along the groundfloor rooms, Colney Durance found himself beside Dr.

Schlesien; the latter smoking, striding, emphasizing, but bearable, as the one of the party who was not

perpetually at the gape in laudation. Colney was heard to say: "No doubt: the German is the race the least

mixed in Europe: it might challenge aboriginals for that. Oddly, it has invented the Cyclop�dia for

Dr. Schlesien replied with an Atlas shrug under fleabite to the insensately infantile interrogation.

"But, my good sir! you quote me your English Latin. I must beg of you you write it down. It is orally

"Oh, you do great things . . ." Dr. Schlesien rejoined in kindness, making his voice a musical intimation of the

"It is true," Dr. Schlesien called. "No, but you learn discipline; you build. I say wid you, not Hohenzollerns

you build! But you shall look above: Eyes up. Ire necesse est. Good, but mount; you come to something.

"Pupil to p�dagogue indeed. You have the wreath in Music, in Jurisprudence, Chemistry, Scholarship, Beer,

"He is chiselling for wit in the Teutonic block," Colney said, falling back to Fenellan.

"Well, that's a tight cravat for the Teutonic thrapple! But he's off by himself to loosen it."

Victor came on the couple testily. "What are you two concocting! I say, do keep the peace, please. An

excellent good fellow; better up in politics than any man I know; understands music; means well, you can

see. You two hate a man at all serious. And he doesn't bore with his knowledge. A scholar too."

"If he'll bring us the atmosphere of the groves of Academe, he may swing his ferule pickled in himself, and

"Yes!" Victor nodded at a recognized antagonism in Fenellan; "but Colney's always lifting the Germans high

Victor headed to the other apartments, thinking that the Rev. Septimus and young Sowerby, Old England

herself, were spared by the diversion of these light skirmishing shots from their accustomed victims to the

masculine people of our time. His friends would want a drilling to be of aid to him in his campaign to come.

For it was one, and a great one. He remembered his complete perception of the plan, all the elements of it, the

forward whirling of it, just before the fall on London Bridge. The greatness of his enterprise laid such hold of

him that the smallest of obstacles had a villainous aspect; and when, as anticipated, Colney and Fenellan were

sultry flies for whomsoever they could fret, he was blind to the reading of absurdities which caused Fredi's

eyes to stream and Lady Grace beside him to stand awhile and laugh out her fit. Young Sowerby appeared

forgiving enoughhe was a perfect gentleman: but Fredi's appalling sense of fun must try him hard. And

those young fellows are often more wounded by a girl's thoughtless laughter than by a man's contempt.

Nataly should have protected him. Her face had the air of a smiling general satisfaction; sign of a pleasure

below the mark required; sign too of a sleepy partner for a battle. Even in the wonderful kitchen, arched and

pillared (where the explanation came to Nesta of Madame Callet's frequent leave of absence of late, when an

inferior dinner troubled her father in no degree), even there his Nataly listened to the transports of the guests

"Mama!" said Nesta, ready to be entranced by kitchens in her bubbling animation: she meant the recalling of

"You none of you guessed Armandine's business!" Victor cried, in a glee that pushed to make the utmost of

this matter and count against chagrin. "She was off to Paris; went to test the last inventions:French brains

are always alert:and in fact, those kitchenranges, gas and coal, and the apparatus for warming plates and

dishes, the whole of the battery is on the model of the Due d'Ariane'sfinest in Europe. Well," he agreed

Mr. Pempton spoke to Miss Graves of the task for a woman to conduct a command so extensive. And, as

when an inoffensive wayfarer has chanced to set foot near a wasp's nest, out on him came woman and her

Victor ejaculated: "Armandine!" Whoever doubted her capacity, knew not Armandine; or not knowing

With that utterance of her name, he saw the orangey spot on London Bridge, and the sinking Tower and

masts and funnels, and the rising of them, on his return to his legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of the

fall he had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her part: Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she

below: and hospitality was to do its part, and music was impressedthe innocent Concerts; his wealth, all

his inventiveness were to serve;and merely to attract and win the tastes of people, for a social support to

Lakelands! Merely that? Much more:if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him to form an

estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his present disappointment, he perceived a

meanness in the result, that was astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination

starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man with a material object in aim, is the man

of his object; and the nearer to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he. is more the arrow of his

bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for scheming: and success is costly; we find we have pledged the

better half of ourselves to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize! He was,

however, learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly's defective sympathy made him look at things through the

feelings she depressed. A shadow of his missed Idea on London. Bridge seemed to cross him from the close

flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only, that it would, if caught, have been an answer to the

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey

THE bearer of his master's midday letters from London shot beyond Nataly as soon as seen, with an apparent

snap of his body in passing. He steamed to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning at the

same rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much respected. He had left the railwaystation on

foot instead of taking a fly, because of a calculation that he would save three minutes; which he had not lost

for having to come through the raincloud. "Perhaps the contrary," Skepsey said: it might be judged to have

accelerated his course: and his hat dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his hands, cheerful as an

"Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?" Colney inquired of him. And Skepsey answered with

precision of statement: "Crowns, no, sir; the nose, it may happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule."

"You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific Pugilism offers us compensation for the broken bridge of a

Skepsey was shy of this gentleman's bite; and he fancied his defense had been correct. Perceiving a crumple

"But, my goodness, you are wet through!" cried Nataly, reproaching herself for the tardy compassion; and

Nesta ran up to them and heaped a thousand pities on her "poor dear Skip," and drove him in beneath the

glassdome to the fragments of picnic, and poured champagne for him, "lest his wife should have to doctor

him for a cold," and poured afresh, when he had obeyed her: "for the toasting of Lakelands, dear Skepsey!"

impossible to resist: so he drank, and blinked; and was then told, that before using his knife and fork he must

betake himself to some fire of shavings and chips, where coffee was being made, for the purpose of drying

his clothes. But this he would not hear of: he was pledged to business, to convey his master's letters, and he

might have to catch a train by the last quarterminute, unless it was behind the timetables; he must hold

himself ready to start. Entreated, adjured, commanded, Skepsey commiseratingly observed to Colney

Durance, "The ladies do not understand, sir!" For Turk of Constantinople had never a more haremed opinion

of the unfitness of women in the brave world of action. The persistence of these ladies endeavouring to

prevent him in the course of his duty, must have succeeded save that for one word of theirs he had two, and

twice the promptitude of motion. He explained to them, as to good children, that the loss of five minutes

might be the loss of a Post, the loss of thousands of pounds, the loss of the character of a Firm; and he was

away to the terrace. Nesta headed him and waved him back. She and her mother rebuked him: they called him

unreasonable; wherein they resembled the chief example of the sex to him, in a wife he had at home, who

levelled that charge against her husband when most she needed discipline:the woman laid hand on the very

She forgot the hospital, he told her cordially, and laughed at the notion of a ducking producing a cold or a

cold a fever, or any thing consumption, with him. So the ladies had to keep down their anxious minds and

Miss Priscilla Graves entering to them, became a witness that they were seductresses for inducing him to

"It is to warm him," they pleaded; and she said: "He must be warm from his walk;" and they said: "But he is

wet;" and said she, without a show of feeling: "Warm water, then;" and Skepsey writhed, as if in the grasp of

anatomists, at being the subject of female contention or humane consideration. Miss Graves caught signs of

the possible proselyte in him; she remarked encouragingly: "I am sure he does not like it; he still has a natural

She distressed his native politeness, for the glass was in his hand, and he was fully aware of her

highprincipled aversion; and he profoundly bowed to principles, believing his England to be pillared on

them; and the lady looked like one who bore the standard of a principle; and if we slap and pinch and starve

our appetites, the idea of a principle seems entering us to support. Subscribing to a principle, our energies are

refreshed; we have a faith in the country that was not with us before the act; and of a real wellfounded faith

come the glowing thoughts which we have at times: thoughts of England heading the nations; when the smell

of an English lane under showers challenges Eden, and the threading of a London crowd tunes discords to the

swell of a cathedral organ. It may be, that by the renunciation of any description of alcohol, a man will stand

clearerheaded to serve his country. He may expect to have a clearer memory, for certain: he will not be

asking himself, unable to decide, whether his master named a Mr. Journeyman or a Mr. Jarniman, as the

person he declined to receive. Either of the two is repulsed upon his application, owing to the guilty similarity

of sounds: but what we are to think of is, our own sad state of inefficiency in failing to remember; which

accuses our physical condition, therefore our habits.Thus the little man debated, scarcely requiring more

than to hear the right word, to be a convert and make him a garland of the proselyte's fetters.

Destructively for the cause she advocated, Miss Priscilla gestured the putting forth of an abjuring hand, with

the recommendation to him, so to put aside temptation that instant; and she signified in a very ugly jerk of her

features, the vilely filthy stuff Morality thought it, however pleasing it might be to a palate corrupted by

But the glass had been handed to him by the lady he respected, who looked angelical in offering it, divinely

other than ugly; and to her he could not be discourteous; not even to pay his homage to the representative of a

principle. He bowed to Miss Graves, and drank, and rushed forth; hearing shouts behind him.

"By the way, Skepsey," he said, "if a man named Jarniman should call at the office, I will see him."

Or was it Journeyman, that his master would not see; and Jarniman that he would?

His habit of obedience, pride of apprehension, and the time to catch the train, forbade inquiry. Besides he

Jarniman, then, was a man whom his master, not wanting to see, one day, and wanting to see, on another day,

might wish to conciliate: a case of policy. Let Jarniman go. Journeyman, on the other hand, was nobody at

all, a ghost of the fancy. Yet this Journeyman was as important an individual, he was a dread reality; more

important to Skepsey in the light of patriot: and only in that light was he permitted of a scrupulous conscience

and modest mind to think upon himself when the immediate subject was his master's interests. For this

Journeyman had not an excuse for existence in Mr. Radnor's pronunciation: he was born of the buzz of a

troubled ear, coming of a disordered brain, consequent necessarily upon a disorderly stomach, that might

protest a degree of comparative innocence, but would be shamed utterly under inspection of the eye of a lady

What, then, was the value to his country of a servant who could not accurately recollect his master's words!

Miss Graves within him asked the rapid little man, whether indeed his ideas were his own after draughts of

The ideas, excited to an urgent animation by his racing trot, were a quiverful in flight over an England terrible

to the foe and dancing on the green. Right so: but would we keepup the dance, we must be red iron to touch:

and the fighter for conquering is the one who can last and has the open brain;and there you have a point

against alcohol. Yes, and Miss Graves, if she would press it, with her natural face, could be pleasant and

persuasive: and she ought to be told she ought to marry, for the good of the country. Women taking

liquor:Skepsey had a vision of his wife with rheumy peepers oblique and miauly mouth, as he had once

beheld the creature:Oh! they need discipline: not such would we have for the mothers of our English

young. Decidedly the women of principle are bound to enter wedlock; they should be bound by law.

Whereas, in the opposing casethe binding of the unprincipled to a celibate statesuch a law would have

saved Skepsey from the necessitated commission of deeds of discipline with one of the female sex, and have

rescued his progeny from a likeness to the cornstalk reverting to weed. He had but a son for England's

defense; and the frame of his boy might be set quaking by a thump on the wind of a drum; the courage of

William Barlow Skepsey would not stand against a sheep; it would windup hares to have a run at him out in

the field. Offspring of a woman of principle! . . . but there is no rubbing out in life: why dream of it Only that

Dwell a moment on the reverse:and first remember the lesson of the Captivity of the Jews and the outcry

of their backsliding and repentance:see a nation of the honourably begotten; muscular men disdaining the

luxuries they will occasionally condescend to taste, like some tribe in Greece; boxers, rowers, runners,

climbers; braced, indomitable; magnanimous, as only the strong can be; an army at word, winning at a stroke

the double battle of the hand and the heart: men who can walk the paths through the garden of the pleasures.

They receive fitting mates, of a build to promise or aid in ensuring depth of chest and long reach of arm for

And we see how much would be due for this to a corps of ladies like Miss Graves, not allowed to remain too

long on the stalk of spinsterhood. Her age might count twentyeight: too long! She should be taught that men

can, though truly ordinary women cannot, walk these orderly paths through the garden. An admission to

women, hinting restrictions, on a ticket marked "in moderation" (meaning, that they may pluck a flower or

fruit along the pathway border to which they are confined), speedily, alas, exhibits them at a mad scramble

across the pleasurebeds. They know not moderation. Neither for their own sakes nor for the sakes of

Posterity will they hold from excess, when they are not pledged to shun it. The reason is, that their minds

But there are grounds for supposing that the example before them of a sex exercising selfcontrol in freedom,

would induce women to pledge themselves to a similar abnegation, until they gain some sense of touch upon

the impalpable duty to the generations coming after us:thanks to the voluntary example we set them.

The stupendous task, which had hitherto baffled Skepsey in the course of conversational remonstrances with

his wife;that of getting the Idea of Posterity into the understanding of its principal agent, might then be

Therefore clearly men have to begin the salutary movement: it manifestly devolves upon them. Let them at

once take to rigorous physical training. Women under compulsion, as vessels: men in their magnanimity,

Miss Graves must have had an intimation for him; he guessed it; and it plunged him into a conflict with her,

that did not suffer him to escape without ruefully feeling the feebleness of his vocabulary: and consequently

he made a reluctant appeal to figures, and it hung upon the bolder exhibition of lists and tables as to whether

he was beaten; and if beaten, he was morally her captive; and this being the case, nothing could be more

repulsive to Skepsey; seeing that he, unable of his nature passively or partially to undertake a line of conduct,

beheld himself wearing a detestable `ribbon,' for sign of an oath quite needlessly sworn (simply to satisfy the

lady overcoming him with nimbler tongue), and blocking the streets, marching in bands beneath banners,

Statistics, upon which his master and friends, after exchanging opinions in argument, always fell back,

frightened him. As long as they had no opponents of their own kind, they swept the field, they were

intelligible, as the word `principle' had become. But the appearance of one body of Statistics invariably

brought up another; and the strokes and counterstrokes were like a play of quarterstaff on the sconce, to

knock all comprehension out of Skepsey. Otherwise he would not unwillingly have inquired tomorrow into

the Statistics of the controversy between the waters of the wells and of the casks, prepared to walk over to the

victorious, however objectionable that proceeding. He hoped to question his master some day: except that his

master would very naturally have a tendency to sumup in favour of winegood wine, in moderation; just

as Miss Graves for the cup of teanot so thoughtfully stipulating that it should be good and not too copious.

Statistics are according to their conjurors; they are not independent bodies, with native colours; they needs

must be painted by the different hands they pass through, and they may be multiplied; a nought or so counts

for nothing with the teller. Skepsey saw that. Yet they can overcome: even as fictitious battalions, they can

overcome. He shrank from the results of a ciphering match having him for object, and was ashamed of

feeling to Statistics as women to giants; nevertheless he acknowledged that the badge was upon him, if Miss

Graves should beat her master in her array of figures, to insist on his wearing it, as she would, she certainly

would. And against his internal conviction perhaps; with the knowledge that the figures were an unfortified

display, and his oath of bondage an unmanly servility, the silliest of ceremonies! He was shockingly feminine

Mr. Durance despised them: he called them, arguing against Mr. Radnor, "those emotional things," not

comprehensibly to Skepsey. But Mr. Durance, a very clever gentleman, could not be right in everything. He

made strange remarks upon his country. Dr. Yatt attributed them to the state of his digestion.

And Mr. Fenellan had said of Mr. Durance that, as "a barrister wanting briefs, the speech in him had been

bottled too long and was an overripe wine dripping sour drops through the rotten cork." Mr. Fenellan said it

laughing, he meant no harm. Skepsey was sure he had the words. He heard no more than other people hear;

he remembered whole sentences, and many: on one of his runs, this active little machine, quickened by

motion to fire, revived the audible of years back; whatever suited his turn of mind at the moment rushed to

the rapid wheels within him. His master's business and friends, his country's welfare and advancement, these,

with records, items, anticipations, of the manlier sports to decorate, were his current themes; all being

chopped and tossed and mixed in salad accordance by his fervour of velocity. And if you would like a further

definition of Genius, think of it as a form of swiftness. It is the lively young greatgrandson, in the brain, of

the travelling force which mathematicians put to paper, in a row of astounding ciphers, for the motion of

earth through space; to the generating of heat, whereof is multiplication, whereof deposited matter, and so

your chaos, your halflighted labyrinth, your ceaseless pressure to evolvement; and then Light, and so

Without having a great brain, the measure of it possessed by Skepsey was alive under strong illumination. In

his heart, while doing penance for his presumptuousness, he believed that he could lead regiments of men. He

was not the army's General, he was the General's Lieutenant, now and then venturing to suggest a piece of

counsel to his Chief. On his own particular drilled regiments, his Chief may rely; and on his knowledge of the

country of the campaign, roads, morasses, masking hills, dividing rivers. He had mapped for himself mentally

the battles of conquerors in his favourite historic reading; and he understood the value of a plan, and the

danger of sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for flanking; and he man*uvred a small one

cunningly to make it a bolt at the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had explained to him Frederick's oblique

attack, Napoleon's employment of the artillery arm preparatory to the hurling of the cataract on the spot of

weakness, Wellington's parallel march with Marmont up to the hour of the decisive cut through the latter at

Salamanca; and Skepsey treated his enemy to the like, deferentially reporting the engagement to a Chief

whom his modesty kept in eminence, for the receiving of the principal honours. As to his men, of all classes

and sorts, they are so supple with training that they sustain a defeat like the sturdy pugilist a knock off his

legs, and up smiling a minute afterone of the truly beautiful sights on this earth! They go at the double half

a day, never sounding a single pair of bellows among them. They have their appetites in full control, to eat

when they can, or cheerfully fast. They have healthy frames, you see; and as the healthy frame is not

artificially heated, it ensues that, under any title you like, they profess the principlesinto the bog we go, we

have got round to it!the principles of those horrible marching and chanting people!

Then, must our England, to be redoubtable to the enemy, be a detestable country for habitation?

Skepsey's head dropped lower, he went as a ram. The sayings of Mr. Durance about his dear England:that

"her remainder of life is in the activity of her diseases":that "she has so fed upon Pap of Compromise as to

be unable any longer to conceive a muscular resolution":that "she is animated only as the carcase to the

blowfly"; and so forth:charged on him during his wrestle with his problem. And the gentleman had said,

had permitted himself to say, that our England's recent history was a provincial apothecary's exhibition of the

battle of bane and antidote. Mr. Durance could hardly mean it. But how could one answer him when he spoke

of the torpor of the people, and of the succeeding Governments as a change of lacqueysor the

pursestring's lacqueys? He said, that Old England has taken to the armchair for good, and thinks it her

whole business to pronounce opinions and listen to herself; and that, in the face of an armed Europe, this

The mover of armed hosts for the defence of the country sat in a thirdclass carriage of the train, approaching

the first of the stations on the way to town. He was instantly up to the level of an external world, and fell into

give and take with a burly broad communicative man; located in London, but born in the North, in view of

Durham cathedral, as he thanked his Lord; who was of the order of porkbutcher; which succulent calling

had carried him down to near upon the borders of Surrey and Sussex, some miles beyond the new big house

of a Mister whose name he had forgotten, though he had heard it mentioned by an acquaintance interested in

the gentleman's doings. But his object was to have a look at a rare breed of swine, worth the journey; that

didn't run to fat so much as to flavour, had longer legs, sharp snouts to plump their hams; over from Spain, it

seemed; and the gentleman owning them was for selling them, finding them wild past correction. But the

acquaintance mentioned, who was down to visit t'other gentleman's big new edifice in workman's hands, had

a mother, who had been cook to a family, and was now widow of a cook's shop; ham, beef, and sausages,

prime pies to order; and a good specimen herself; and if ever her son saw her spirit at his bedside, there

wouldn't be room for much else in that chamber supposing us to keep our shapes. But he was the right sort

of son, anxious to push his mother's shop where he saw a chance, and do it cheap; and those foreign pigs,

after a disappointment to their importer, might be had pretty cheap, and were accounted tasty.

He informed the man of his having heard from a scholar, that pigs had been the cause of more bloody battles

How so? the porkbutcher asked, and said he was not much of a scholar, and pigs might be provoking, but he

had not heard they were a cause of strife between man and man. For possession of them, Skepsey explained.

Oh! possession! Why, we've heard of bloody battles for the possession of women! Men will fight for almost

anything they care to get or call their own, the porkbutcher said; and he praised Old England for avoiding

war. Skepsey nodded. How if war is forced on us?Then we fight.Suppose we are not prepared?We

soon get that up. Skepsey requested him to state the degree of resistance he might think he could bring

"I would give you two minutes," rejoined Skepsey, eyeing him intently and kindly: insomuch that it could be

"Rather short allowance, eh, master?" said the bigger man. "Feel here;" he straightened out his arm and

Skepsey performed the national homage to muscle. "Twice that, would not help without the science," he

The porkbutcher's throat sounded, as it were, commas and colons, punctuations in his reflections, while he

tightened fingers along the iron lump. "Stringy. You're a wiry one, no mistake." It was encomium. With the

ingrained contempt of size for a smallness that has not yet taught it the prostrating lesson, he said: "Weight

Skepsey rejected the title. "I can engage to teach young men, upon a proper observance of first principles."

"They be hanged!" cried the ruffled porkbutcher. "Our best men never got it out of books. Now, you tell

meyou've got a spiflicating style of talk about you:no brag, you tell me course, the best man wins, if

you mean that:now, if I was one of 'em, and I fetches you a bit of a flick, how then? Would you be ready to

"Bang me!" was roared. After a stare at the mild little figure with the fitfully deadlevelled large grey eyes in

front of him, the porkbutcher resumed: "Take you for the man you say you be, you're just the man for my

friend Jarn and me. He dearly loves to see a setto, self the same. What prettier? And if you would be so

obliging some day as to favour us with a display, we'd head a cap conformably, whether you'd the best of it,

according to your expectations, or t'other way:For there never was shame in a jolly good licking! as the

song says: that is, if you take it and make it appear jolly good.And find you an opponent meet and fit,

At this point, it became a crying necessity for Skepsey to escape from an area of boastfulness, into which he

had fallen inadvertently; and he hastened to apologize `for his personal reference,' that was intended for an

illustration of our country caught unawares by a highly trained picked soldiery, inferior in numbers to the

patriotic levies, but sharp at the edge and knowing how to strike. Measure the axe, measure the tree; and

"Invasion, is it?and you mean, we're not to hit back?" the porkbutcher bellowed, and presently secured a

murmured approbation from an audience of three, that had begun to comprehend the dialogue, and

strengthened him in a manner to teach Skepsey the foolishness of ever urging analogies of too extended a

circle to close sharply on the mark. He had no longer a chance, he was overborne, identified with the fated

invader, rolled away into the chops of the Channel, to be swallowed up entire, and not a rag left of him, but

John Bull tucking up his shirtsleeves on the shingle beach, ready for a second or a third; crying to them to

Warmed by his Bullish victory, and friendly to the vanquished, the porkbutcher told Skepsey he should like

to see more of him, and introduced himself on a card: Benjamin Shaplow, not far from the Bank.

They parted at the Terminus, where three shrieks of an engine, sounding like merry messages of the damned

to their congeners in the anticipatory stench of the cabdroppings above, disconnected sane hearing;

perverted it, no doubt. Or else it was the stamp of a particular name on his mind, which impressed Skepsey,

as he bored down the street and across the bridge, to fancy in recollection, that Mr. Shaplow, when reiterating

the wish for self and friend to witness a display of his cunning with the fists, had spoken the name of

Jarniman. An unusual name: yet more than one Jarniman might well exist. And unlikely that a friend of the

porkbutcher would be the person whom Mr. Radnor first prohibited and then desired to receive. It hardly

mattered:considering that the Dutch Navy did really, incredible as it seems now, come sailing a good way

up the River Thames, into the very main artery of Old England. And what thought the Tower of it? Skepsey

looked at the Tower in sympathy, wondering whether the Tower had seen those impudent Dutch: a nice

people at home, he had heard. Mr. Shaplow's Jarniman might actually be Mr. Radnor's, he inclined to think.

FENELLAN, in a musing exclamation, that was quite spontaneous, had put a picture on the departing

Skepsey, as observed from an end of the Lakelands upper terracewalk. "Queer little water wagtail it is!"

And Lady Grace Halley and Miss Graves and Mrs. Cormyn, snugly silken dry ones, were so taken with the

pretty likeness after hearing Victor call the tripping dripping creature the happiest man in England, that they

nursed it in their minds for a Bewick tailpiece to the chapter of a pleasant rural day. It imbedded the day in an

We are indebted almost for construction to those who will define us briefly: we are but scattered leaves to the

general comprehension of us until such a work of binding and labelling is done. And should the definition be

not so correct as brevity pretends to make it at one stroke, we are at least rendered portable; thus we pass into

the conceptions of our fellows, into the records, down to posterity. Anecdotes of England's happiest man

were related, outlines of his personal history requested. His nomination in chief among the traditionally very

merry Islanders was hardly borne out by the tale of his enchainment with a drunken yokefellowunless

upon the Durance version of the felicity of his countrymen; still, the water wagtail carried it, Skepsey trotted

into memories. Heroes conducted up Fame's templesteps by ceremonious historians, who are studious, when

the platform is reached, of the art of setting them beneath the flambeau of a final image, before thrusting them

inside to be rivetted on their pedestals, have an excellent chance of doing the same, let but the provident

narrators direct that image to paint the thing a mothlike humanity desires, in the thing it shrinks from. Miss

Priscilla Graves now fastened her meditations upon Skepsey; and it was important to him.

Tobacco withdrew the haunting shadow of the Rev. Septimus Barmby from Nesta. She strolled beside Louise

de Seilles, to breathe sweetsweet in the dear friend's ear and tell her she loved her. The presence of the

German had, without rousing animosity, damped the young Frenchwoman, even to a revulsion when her

feelings had been touched by hearing praise of her France, and wounded by the subjects of the praise. She

bore the national scar, which is barely skinclothing of a gash that will not heal since her country was

overthrown and dismembered. Colney Durance could excuse the unreasonableness in her, for it had a dignity,

and she controlled it, and quietly suffered, trusting to the steady, tireless, concentrated aim of her France. In

the Gallic mind of our time, France appears as a prematurely buried Glory, that heaves the mound oppressing

breath and cannot cease; and calls hourly, at times keenly, to be remembered, rescued from the pain and the

mouldspots of that foul sepulture. Mademoiselle and Colney were friends, partly divided by her speaking

once of revanche; whereupon he assumed the chair of the Moralist, with its right to lecture, and went over to

the enemy; his talk savoured of a German. Our holding of the balance, taking two sides, is incomprehensible

to a people quivering with the double wound to body and soul. She was of Breton blood. Cymric enough was

in Nesta to catch any thrill from her and join to her mood, if it hung out a colour sad or gay, and was noble, as

Nataly was not so sympathetic. Only the Welsh and pure Irish are quick at the feelings of the Celtic French.

Nataly came of a Yorkshire stock; she had the bravery, humaneness and generous temper of our civilized

North, and a taste for mademoiselle's fine breeding, with a distaste for the singular air of superiority in

composure which it was granted to mademoiselle to wear with an unassailable reserve when the roughness of

the commercial boor was obtrusive. She said of her to Colney, as they watched the couple strolling by the

lake below: "Nesta brings her out of her frosts. I suppose it's the presence of Dr. Schlesien. I have known it

"Richard Wagner Germanized ridicule of the French when they were down," said Colney. "She comes of a

"`Never forgives' is horrible to think of! I fancied you liked your `Kelts,' as you call them."

Colney seized on a topic that shelved a less agreeable one that he saw coming. "You English won't descend to

understand what does not resemble you. The French are in a state of feverish patriotism. You refuse to treat

them for a case of fever. They are lopped of a limb: you tell them to be at rest!"

"And the Kelts, as they are called, can't and won't forgive injuries; look at Ireland, look at Wales, and the

Keltic Scot. Have you heard them talk? It happened in the year 1400: it's alive to them as if it were yesterday.

Old History is as dead to the English as their first father. They beg for the privilege of pulling the forelock to

the bearers of the titles of the men who took their lands from them and turn them to the uses of cattle. The

Saxon English had, no doubt, a heavier thrashing than any people allowed to subsist ever received: you see it

to this day; the crick of the neck at the name of a lord is now concealed and denied, but they have it and

betray the effects; and it's patent in their journals, all over their literature. Where it's not seen, another blood's

at work. The Kelt won't accept that form of slavery. Let him be servile, supple, cunning, treacherous, and to

appearance timeserving, he will always remember his day of manly independence and who robbed him: he

"Natural colours. He does not offer the other cheek or turn his back to be kicked after a knock to the ground.

Instead of asking him to forgive, which he cannot do, you must teach him to admire. A mercantile

community guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its Dagon Capital,

finds that difficult. However, there's the secret of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy or

oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your negative passive

"They are inconscient, real fits. They come of a hot nerve. He is manageable, sober too when his mind is

charged. As to the French people, they are the most mixed of any European nation; so they are packed with

contrasts: they are full of sentiment, they are sharply logical; freethinkers, devotees; affectionate, ferocious;

frivolous, tenacious; the passion of the season operating like sun or moon on these qualities; and they can

reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below your level, they're above it:a paradox is at home with them!"

"My friend, you speak seriouslyan unusual compliment," Nataly said, and ungratefully continued: "You

know what is occupying me. I want your opinion. I guess it. I want to heara mean thirst perhaps, and you

would pay me any number of compliments to avoid the subject; but let me hear:this house!"

"You may see it all before you," he said, "straight as the Seine chauss�e from the hill of La Roche Guyon."

"Ah, the happy ramble that year!" she cried. "And my Nesta just seven. We had been six months at Craye.

Every day of our life together looks happy to me, looking back, though I know that every day had the same

troubles. I don't think I'm deficient in courage; I think I could meet. . . . But the false position so cruelly

weakens me. I am no woman's equal when I have to receive or visit. It seems easier to meet the worst in

lifedanger, death, anything. Pardon me for talking so. Perhaps we need not have left Craye or Creckholt . .

. ?" she hinted an interrogation. "Though I am not sorry; it is not good to be where one tastes poison. Here it

may be as deadly, worse. Dear friend, I am so glad you remember La Roche Guyon. He was popular with the

"You forget the principal character. Victor promises; he may have learnt a lesson at Creckholt. But look at

Colney's liver took the thrust of a skewer through it. He spoke as in meditative encomium: "His entry into

Parliament would promote himself and family to a station of eminence naked over the Clock Tower of the

She moaned. "At the vilest, I cannot regret my conductbear what I may. I can bear real pain: what kills me

is, the suspicion. And I feel it like a guilty wretch! And I do not feel the guilt! I should do the same again, on

reflection. I do believe it saved him. I do; oh! I do, I do. I cannot expect my family to see with my eyes. You

know themmy brother and sisters think I have disgraced them; they put no value on my saving him. It

"Ah, friend, I take your words. He sinks terribly when he sinks at all.Spare us a little while.We have to

judge of what is good in the circumstances:I hear your reply! But the principal for me to study is Victor.

You have accused me of being the voice of the enamoured woman. I follow him, I know; I try to advise; I

find it is wisdom to submit. My people regard my behaviour as a wickedness or a madness. I did save him. I

joined my fate with his. I am his mate, to help, and I cannot oppose him, to distract him. I do my utmost for

privacy. He must entertain. Believe me, I feel for themsisters and brother. And now that my sisters are

"Victor promisesI won't repeat it. Yes, I see the house! There appears to be a prospect, a hopeI cannot

allude to it. Craye and Creckholt may have been some lesson to him.Selwyn spoke of me kindly? Ah, yes,

it is the way with my people to pretend that Victor has been the ruin of me, that they may come round to

family sentiments. In the same way, his relatives, the Duvidney ladies, have their picture of the woman

misleading him. Imagine me the naughty adventuress!"Nataly falsified the thought insurgent at her heart,

in adding: "I do not say I am blameless." It was a concession to the circumambient enemy, of whom even a

good friend was a part, and not better than a respectful emissary. The dearest of her friends belonged to that

hostile world. Only Victor, no other, stood with her against the world. Her child, yes; the love of her child she

had; but the child's destiny was an alien phantom, looking at her with harder eyes than she had vision of in

her family. She did not say she was blameless, did not affect the thought. She would have wished to say, for

Colney's features were not inviting, though the expression was not repellent. She sighed deeply; and to count

on something helpful by mentioning it, reverted to the `prospect' which there appeared to be. "Victor speaks

His release! Her language pricked a satirist's gallbladder. Colney refrained from speaking to wound, and

"Counting the number of times he has been expecting the release, he is bound to believe it near at hand."

"You don't?" she asked: her bosom was up in a crisis of expectation for the answer: and on a pause of

He perceived the insane eagerness through her mask, and despised it, pitying the woman. "And you don't," he

said. "You catch at delusions, to excuse the steps you consent to take. Or you want me to wear the blinkers,

the better to hoodwink your own eyes. You see it as well as I:if you enter that house, you have to go

"He finds you in tears: he is immensely devoted; he flings up all to protect `his Nataly.'"

She bowed to her chastisement. One motive in her consultation with him came of the knowledge of his

capacity to inflict it and his honesty in the act, and a thirst she had to hear the truth loudtongued from him;

together with a feeling that he was excessive and satiric, not to be read by the letter of his words: and in

consequence, she could bear the lash from him, and tell her soul that he overdid it, and have an unjustly

treated self to cherish.But in very truth she was a woman who loved to hear the truth; she was formed to

love the truth her position reduced her to violate; she esteemed the hearing it as medical to her; she selected

for counsellor him who would apply it: so far she went on the straight way; and the desire for a sustaining

deception from the mouth of a trustworthy man set her hanging on his utterances with an anxious hope of the

reverse of what was to come and what she herself apprehended, such as checked her pulses and iced her feet

and fingers. The reason being, not that she was craven or absurd or paradoxical, but that, living at an intenser

strain upon her nature than she or any around her knew, her strength snapped, she broke down by chance

there where Colney was rendered spiteful in beholding the display of her inconsequent if not puling sex.

She might have sought his counsel on another subject, if a paralyzing chill of her frame in the foreview of it

had allowed her to speak: she felt grave alarms in one direction, where Nesta stood in the eye of her father;

besides an unformed dread that the simplicity in generosity of Victor's nature was doomed to show signs of

dross ultimately, under the necessity he imposed upon himself to run out his forecasts, and scheme, and

defensively compel the world to serve his ends, for the protection of those dear to him.

At night he was particularly urgent with her for the harmonious duet in praise of Lakelands; and plied her

with questions all round and about it, to bring out the dulcet accord. He dwelt on his choice of costly marbles,

his fireplace and mantelpiece designs, the great hall, and suggestions for imposing and beautiful furniture;

concordantly enough, for the large, the lofty and rich of colour won her, enthusiasm; but overwhelmingly to

any mood of resistance; and strangely in a man who had of late been adopting, as if his own, a modern tone,

or the social and literary hints of it, relating to the right uses of wealth, and the duty as well as the delight of

"She is our girl, my love. `I could live and die here!' Live, she may. There's room enough."

Nataly saw the door of a covert communication pointed at in that remark. She gathered herself for an effort to

"The time begins to run. We have to look forward now:I declare, it's I who seem the provident mother for

"Let our girl wait; don't hurry her mind to. . . . She is happy with her father and mother. She is in the happiest

A pang of the resolution now to debate the case with Victor, which would be of necessity to do the avoided

thing and roll up the forbidden curtain opening on their whole history past and prospective, was met in

Nataly's bosom by the more bitter immediate confession that she was not his match. To speak would be to

succumb; and shamefully after the effort; and hopelessly after being overborne by him. There was not the

anticipation of a set contest to animate the woman's naturally valiant heart; he was too strong: and his

vividness in urgency overcame her in advance, fascinated her sensibility through recollection; he fanned an

inclination, lighted it to make it a passion, a frenzied resolveshe remembered how and when. She had

quivering cause to remember the fateful day of her step, in a letter received that morning from a married

sister, containing no word of endearment or proposal for a meeting. An unregretted day, if Victor would think

of the dues to others; that is, would take station with the world to see his reflected position, instead of seeing

it through their selfjustifying knowledge of the honourable truth of their love, and pressing to claim and

They had done evil to no one as yet. Nataly thought that; notwithstanding the outcry of the ancient and

withered woman who bore Victor Radnor's name: for whom, in consequence of the rod the woman had used,

this tenderest of hearts could summon no emotion. If she had it, the thing was not to be hauled up to

consciousness. Her feeling was, that she forgave the wrinkled Malignity: pity and contrition dissolving in the

effort to produce the placable forgiveness. She was frigid because she knew rightly of herself, that she in the

place of power would never have struck so meanly. But the mainspring of the feeling in an almost

remorseless bosom drew from certain chance expressions of retrospective physical distaste on Victor's

part;hard to keep from a short utterance between the nuptial two, of whom the unshamed exuberant male

has found the sweet reverse in his mate, a haven of heavenliness, to delight in: these conjoined with a

woman's unspoken pleading ideas of her own, on her own behalf, had armed her jealously in vindication of

Now, as long as they did no palpable wrong about them, Nataly could argue her case in her

consciencedeep down and out of hearing, where women under scourge of the laws they have not helped

decree may and do deliver their minds. She stood in that subterranean recess for Nature against the

Institutions of Man: a woman little adapted for the post of rebel; but to this, by the agency of circumstances,

it had come; she who was designed by nature to be an ornament of those Institutions opposed them: and when

thinking of the rights and the conduct of the decrepit Legitimatevirulent in a heathen vindictiveness

declaring itself holyshe had Nature's logic, Nature's voice, for selfdefence. It was eloquent with her, to

the deafening of other voices in herself, even to the convincing of herself, when she was wrought by the fires

within to feel elementally. The other voices within her issued of the acknowledged dues to her family and to

the worldthe civilization protecting women: sentences thereanent in modern books and journals. But the

remembrance of moods of fiery exaltation, when the Nature she called by name of Love raised the chorus

within to stop all outer buzzing, was, in a perpetual struggle with a whirlpool, a constant support while she

and Victor were one at heart. The sense of her standing alone made her sway; and a thought of differences

Luxuriously she applied to his public life for witness that he had governed wisely as well as affectionately so

long; and he might therefore, with the chorussing of the world of public men, expect a woman blindfold to

follow his lead. But no; we may be rebels against our time and its Laws: if we are really for Nature, we are

not lawless. Nataly's untutored scruples, which came side by side with her ability to plead for her acts,

restrained her from complicity in the ensnaring of a young man of social rank to espouse the daughter of a

couple socially insurgentstained, to common thinking, should denunciation come. The Nature upholding

her fled at a vision of a stranger entangled. Pitiable to reflect, that he was not one of the adventurerlords of

prey who hunt and run down shadowed heiresses and are congratulated on their luck in a tolerating country!

How was the young man to be warned? How, under the happiest of suppositions, propitiate his family! And

such a family, if consenting with knowledge, would consent only for the love of money. It was angling with

as vile a bait as the rascal lord's. Humiliation hung on the scheme; it struck to scorching in the contemplation

She did not ask for the specification of a "good fortune that might pass;" wishing to save him from his

wonted twists of elusiveness, and herself with him from the dread discussion it involved upon one point.

"I should say, when they feel warmly enough to think little of their differences."

"Fire smoothes the creases, yes; and fire is what they're both wanting in. Though Priscy has Concertpathos

in her voice: couldn't act a bit! And Pempton's 'cello tones now and then have gone through mesimply

from his fiddlebow, I believe. Don't talk to me of feeling in a couple, within reach of one another and

He neared her, wooing her; and she assented, with a franker smile than she had worn through the day.

The common burden on their heartsthe simple discussion to come of the task of communicating dire

TWO that live together in union are supposed to be intimate on every leaf. Particularly when they love one

another and the cause they have at heart is common to them in equal measure, the uses of a cordial familiarity

forbid reserves upon important matters between them, as we think; not thinking of an imposed secretiveness,

beneath the false external of submissiveness, which comes of an experience of repeated inefficiency to

maintain a case in opposition, on the part of the loquently weaker of the pair. In Constitutional Kingdoms a

powerful Government needs not to be tyrannical to lean oppressively; it is more serviceable to party than

agreeable to country; and where the alliance of men and women binds a loving couple, of whom one is a

torrent of persuasion, their differings are likely to make the other resemble a log of the torrent. It is borne

along; it dreams of a distant corner of the way for a determined stand; it consents to its whirling in

There may be, moreover, while each has the key of the fellow breast, a mutually sensitive nerve to protest

against intrusion of light or sound. The cloud over the name of their girl could now strike Nataly and Victor

dumb in their taking of counsel. She divined that his hint had encouraged him to bring the crisis nearer, and

he that her comprehension had become tremblingly awake. They shrank, each of them, the more from an end

drawing closely into view. All subjects glooming off or darkening up to it were shunned by them verbally,

and if they found themselves entering beneath that shadow, conversation passed to an involuntary gesture,

more explicit with him, significant of the prohibited, though not acknowledging it.

All the stronger was it Victor's purpose, leaping in his fashion to the cover of action as an escape from

perplexity, to burn and scheme for the wedding of their girlthe safe wedding of that dearest, to have her

protected, secure, with the world warm about her. And he well knew why his Nataly had her look of a closed

vault (threatening, if opened, to thunder upon Life), when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call it

feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket of marriage ties for the market on her

arm. He knew that she would soon have to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing of it,

caught at his throat. Reasonably she dreaded the mother's task; pardonably indeed. But it is for the mother to

do, with a girl. He deputed it lightly to the mother because he could see himself stating the facts to a son.

"And, my dear boy, you will from this day draw your five thousand a year, and we double it on the day of

His desire for his girl's protection by the name of one of our great Families, urged him to bind Nataly to the

fact, with the argument, that it was preferable for the girl to hear their story during her green early youth,

while she reposed her beautiful blind faith in the discretion of her parents, and as an immediate step to the

placing of her hand in a husband's. He feared that her mother required schooling to tell the story vindicatingly

and proudly, in a manner to distinguish instead of degrading or temporarily seeming to accept degradation.

The world would weigh on her confession of the weight of the world on her child; she would want inciting

and strengthening, if one judged of her capacity to meet the trial by her recent bearing; and how was he to do

it! He could not imagine himself encountering the startled, tremulous, nascent intelligence in those pure

brown darklashed eyes of Nesta; he pitied the poor mother. Fancifully directing her to say this and that to

the girl, his tongue ran till it was cut from his heart and left to wag dead colourless words.

The prospect of a similar business of exposition, certainly devolving upon the father in treaty with the

fortunate youth, gripped at his vitals a minute, so intense was his pride in appearing woundless and scarless, a

shining surface, like pure health's, in the sight of men. Nevertheless he skimmed the story, much as a lecturer

strikes his wand on the prominent places of a map, that is to show us how he arrived at the principal point,

which we are all agreed to find chiefly interesting. This with Victor was the naming of Nesta's bridal

endowment. He rushed to it. "My girl will have ten thousand a year settled on her the day of her marriage."

It helped him over the unpleasant part of that interview. At the same time, it moved him to a curious

contempt of the youth. He had to conjureup an image of the young man in person, to correct the sentiment:

Mr. Dudley Sowerby was not one of the youths whose presence would rectify such an abstract estimate of the

genus pursuer. He now came frequently of an evening, to practise a duet for flutes with Victor;a

Mercadante, honeyed and flowing; too honeyed to suit a style that, as Fenellan characterized it to Nataly,

went through the music somewhat like an inquisitive tourist in a foreign town, conscientious to get to the end

of the work of pleasure; until the notes had become familiar, when it rather resembled a constable's walk

along the midnight streets into collision with a garlanded roysterer; and the man of order and the man of

passion, true to the measure though they were, seeming to dissent, almost to wrangle, in their different ways

of winding out the melody, on to the last movement; which was plainly a question between home to the

strayed lover's quarters or off to the lockup. Victor was altogether the younger of the two. But his vehement

accompaniment was a tutorship; Mr. Sowerby improved; it was admitted by Nesta and mademoiselle that he

gained a show of feeling; he had learnt that feeling was wanted. Passion, he had not a notion of: otherwise he

would not be delaying;the interview, dramatized by the father of the young bud of womanhood, would be

taking place, and the entry into Lakelands calculable, for Nataly's comfort, as under the �gis of the Cantor

earldom. Gossip flies to a wider circle round the members of a great titled family, is inaudible; or no longer

the diptherian whisper the commonalty hear of the commonalty: and so we see the social uses of our

aristocracy survive. We do not want the shield of any family; it is the situation that wants it; Nataly ought to

be awake to the fact. One blow and we have silenced our enemy: Nesta's weddingday has relieved her

Victor's thoughts upon the instrument for striking that blow, led him to suppose Mr. Sowerby might be

meditating on the extent of the young lady's fortune. He talked randomly of money, in a way to shatter

Nataly's conception of him. He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his practice to shun the doing;

and hit the resounding note on mines, which have risen in the market like the crest of a serpent, casting a

certain spell upon the mercantile understanding. "Fredi's diamonds from her own mine, or what once

Nataly respected the young fellow for not displaying avidity at the flourish of the bait, however it might be

affecting him; and she fancied that he did laboriously, in his way earnestly, study her girl, to sound for

harmony between them, previous to a wooing. She was a closer reader of social character than Victor; from

refraining to run on the broad lines which are but faintly illustrative of the individual one in being common to

allunless we have hit by chance on an example of the downright in roguery or folly or simple goodness.

Mr. Sowerby's bearing to Nesta was hardly warmed by the glitter of diamonds. His next visit showed him

livelier in courtliness, brighter, fresher; but that was always his way at the commencement of every visit, as if

his reflections on the foregone had come to a satisfactory conclusion; and the labours of the new study of the

Gentleman he was. In the recognition of his quality as a man of principle and breeding, Nataly was

condemned by thoughts of Nesta's future to question whether word or act of hers should, if inclination on

both sides existed, stand between her girl and a true gentleman. She counselled herself, as if the counsel were

in requisition, to be passive; and so doing, she more acutely than Victorsave in his chance

flashesdiscerned the twist of her very nature caused by their false position. And her panacea for ills, the

lost little cottage, would not have averted it: she would there have had the same coveting desire to name a

man of breeding, honour, station, for Nesta's husband. Perhaps in the cottage, choosing at leisure, her consent

to see the brilliant young creature tied to the best of dull men would have been unready, without the girl to

push it. For the Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in liveliness; he took the second part, as, it is painful

for a woman with the oldfashioned ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold; resembling in his look the

deaf, who constantly require to have an observation repeated; resembling the most intelligent of animals,

which we do not name, and we reprove ourselves for seeing a likeness. Yet the likeness or apparent likeness

would suggest that we have not so much to fear upon the day of the explanation to him. Some gain is there.

Shameful thought! Nataly hastened her mind to gather many instances or indications testifying to the sterling

substance in young Mr. Sowerby, such as a mother would pray for her soninlaw to possess. She discovered

herself feeling as the burdened mother, not providently for her girl, in the choice of a mate. The perception

was clear, and not the less did she continue working at the embroidery of Mr. Sowerby on the basis of his

excellent moral foundations, all the while hoping, praying, that he might not be lured on to the proposal for

Nesta. But her subservience to the power of the persuasive will in Victorwhich was like the rush of a

conflagration compelled her to think realizingly of any scheme he allowed her darkly to read. Opposition

to him, was comparable to the stand of blocks of timber before flame. Colney Durance had done her the

mischief we take from the pessimist when we are overweighted: in darkening the vision of external aid from

man or circumstance to one who felt herself mastered. Victor could make her treacherous to her wishes, in

revolt against them, though the heart protested. His first conquest of her was in her blood, to weaken a spirit

of resistance. For the precedent of submission is a charm upon the fainthearted through love: it unwinds,

unwills them. Nataly resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and she had her moral

sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting consciousness of material support in the thought, that

the day was not present, was possibly distant, might never arrive. Would Victor's release come sooner? And

that was a prospect bearing resemblance to hopes of the cure of a malady through a sharp operation.

These were matters going on behind the curtain; as wholly vital to her, and with him at times almost as

dominant, as the spiritual in memory, when flesh has left but its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten; and

all their talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions to Lakelands, music, public affairs, the

pardonable foibles of friends created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and heroines, exhibitions of

pictures, the sorrows of Crowned Heads, so serviceable ever to mankind as an admonition to the ambitious, a

salve to the envious!in fine, whatsoever can entertain or affect the most social of couples, domestically

without a care to appearance. And so far they partiallydramaticallydeceived themselves by imposing on

the world while they talked and duetted; for the purchase of furniture from a flowing purse is a cheerful

occupation; also a City issuing out of hospital, like this poor City of London, inspires good citizens to healthy

activity. But the silence upon what they were most bent on, had the sinister effect upon Victor, of obscuring

his mental hold of the beloved woman, drifting her away from him. In communicating Fenellan's news

through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. Burman's intentions, he was aware that there was an obstacle to his being

huggingly genial, even candidly genial with her, until he could deal out further news, corroborative and

consecutive, to show the action of things as progressive. Fenellan had sunk into his usual apathy:and might

plead the impossibility of his moving faster than the woman professing to transform herself into beneficence

out of malignity;one could hear him saying the words! Victor had not seen him since last Concert evening,

and he deemed it as well to hear the words Fenellan's mouth had to say. He called at an early hour of the

Westward tidal flow at the Insurance Office looking over the stormy square of the first of Seamen.

AFTER cursory remarks about the business of the Office and his friend's contributions to periodical

literature, in which he was interested for as long as he had assurance that the safe income depending upon

official duties was not endangered by them, Victor kicked his heels to and fro. Fenellan waited for him to

Victor curbed himself and said: "By the way, you're not likely to have dealings with Blathenoy. The fellow

has a screw to the back of a shifty eye; I see it at work to fix the look for business. I shall sit on the Board of

my Bank. One hears things. He lives in style at Wrensham. By the way, Fredi has little Mab Mountney from

Creckholt staying with her. You said of little Mabsy`Here she comes into the room all pink and white, like

a daisy.' She's the daisy still; reminds us of our girl at that age.So, then, we come to another dead block!"

"Well, no; it's a chemist's shop, if that helps us on," said Fenellan, settling to a new posture in his chair.

"The lady. I'll tell you. I have it from Carling, worthy man; and lawyers can be brought to untruss a point

over a cup of claret. He's a bit of a `Mackenzie Man,' as old aunts of mine used to say at homea Man of

Feeling. Thinks he knows the world, from having sifted and sorted a lot of our dustbins; as the modern

Realists imagine it's an exposition of positive human nature when they've pulled down our noses to the worst

partsif there's a worse where all are useful: but the Realism of the dogs is to have us by the nose:excite

it and befoul it, and you're fearfully credible! You don't read that olfactory literature. However, friend Carling

is a conciliatory carle. Three or four days of the week the lady, he says, drives to her chemist's, and there she

sits in the shop; round the corner, as you enter; and sees all Charing in the shop lookingglass at the back;

herself a stranger spectacle, poor lady, if Carling's picture of her is not overdone; with her fashionable

nobonnet striding the contribution chignon on the crown, and a huge square green shade over her forehead.

Sits hours long, and cocks her ears at orders of applicants for drugs across the counter, and sometimes catches

wind of a prescription, and consults her chemist, and thinks she'll try it herself. It's a basket of medicine

"Ha! Regent's Park!" exclaimed Victor, and shook at recollections of the district and the number of the house,

dismal to him. London buried the woman deep until a mention of her sent her flaring over London. "A

"She had always a turn for drugs.Not far from here, did you say? And every day! under a green shade?"

"Dear fellow, don't be suggesting ballads; we'll go now," said Fenellan. "It's true it's like sitting on the banks

"Across the counter of Boyle and Luckwort, the lady's chemists. I called the day before yesterday, after you

"The great Dr. Themison; who kills you kindlier than most, and is much in request for it."

"There's one of your echoes of Colney!" Victor cried. "One gets dead sick of that wornout old jibing at

doctors. They don't kill, you know very well. It's not to their interest to kill. They may take the relish out of

Fenellan sent an eye of discreet comic penetration travelling through his friend.

"The City's mending; it's not the weary widow woman of the day when we capsized the diurnal with your

royal Old Veuve," he said, as they trod the pavement. "Funny people, the English! They give you all the

priming possible for amusement and jollity, and devil a sentrybox for the exercise of it; and if you shake a

leg publicly, partner or not, you're marched off to penitence. I complain, that they have no philosophical

"You're in view of it in a minute. And what a square, for recreative dancing! And what a people, to be turning

it into a place of political agitation! And what a country, where from morning to night it's an endless wrangle

about the first conditions of existence! Old Colney seems right now and then: they're the offspring of

pirates, and they've got the manners and tastes of their progenitors, and the trick of quarrelling everlastingly

over the booty. I'd have bandmusic here for a couple of hours, three days of the week at the least; and down

in the East; and that forsaken North quarter of London; and the Baptist South too. But just as those

omnibuswheels are the miserable music of this London of ours, it's only too sadly true that the people are in

the first rumble of the notion of the proper way to spend their lives. Now you see the shop: Boyle and

Victor looked. He threw his coat open, and pulled the waistcoat, and swelled it, ahemming. "That shop?" said

he. And presently: "Fenellan, I'm not superstitious, I think. Now listen; I declare to you, on the day of our

drinking Old Veuve together lastyou remember it,I walked home up this way across the square, and I

was about to step into that identical shop, for some household prescription in my pocket, having forgotten

Nataly's favourite City chemists Fenbird and Jay, whenI'm stating a factI distinctlyI'm sure of the

shop felt myself plucked back by the elbow; pulled back: the kind of pull when you have to put a foot

So does memory inspired by the sensations contribute an additional item for the colouring of history.

He touched the elbow, showed a flitting face of crazed amazement in amusement, and shrugged and

halflaughed, dismissing the incident, as being perhaps, if his hearer chose to have it so, a gem of the rubbish

Fenellan smiled indulgently. "Queer things happen. I recollect reading in my green youth of a clergyman,

who mounted a pulpit of the port where he was landed after his almost solitary rescue from a burning ship at

midnight in mid sea, to inform his congregation, that he had overnight of the catastrophe a personal

Warning right in his ear from a Voice, when at his bed or bunkside, about to perform the beautiful

ceremony of undressing: and the Rev. gentleman was to lie down in his full uniform, not so much as to

relieve himself of his boots, the Voice insisted twice; and he obeyed it, despite the discomfort to his poor

feet; and he jumped up in his boots to the cry of Fire, and he got them providentially over the scuffling deck

straight at the first rush into the boat awaiting them, and had them safe on and polished the day he preached

the sermon of gratitude for the special deliverance. There was a Warning! and it might well be called, as he

called it, from within. We're cared for, never doubt. Aidetoi. Be ready dressed to help yourself in a calamity,

or you'll not stand in boots at your next Sermon, contrasting with the burnt. That sounds like the moral."

"She could have seen me," Victor threw out an irritable suggestion. The idea of the recent propinquity set

"Scarcely likely. I'm told she sits looking on her lap, under the beetling shade, until she hears an order for

tinctures or powders, or a mixture that strikes her fancy. It's possible to do more suicidal things than sit the

afternoons in a chemist's shop and see poor creatures get their different passports to Orcus."

Victor stepped mutely beneath the windows of the bellied glassurns of chemical wash. The woman might be

inside there now! She might have seen his figure in the shopmirror! And she there! The wonder of it all

seemed to be, that his private history was not walking the streets. The thinness of the partition concealing it,

hardly guaranteed a day's immunity: because this woman would live in London, in order to have her

choice of a central chemist's shop, where she could feed a ghastly imagination on the various recipes . . . and

while it would have been so much healthier for her to be living in a recess of the country!

Those were the corresponding two strokes of the pendulum which kept the woman going.

"And deadly spite." That was the emanation of the monotonous horrible conflict, for which, and by which,

In the neighbourhood of the shop, he could not but think of her through the feelings of a man scorched by a

A little further on, he said: "Poor soul!" He confessed to himself, that latterly he had, he knew not why, been

impatient with her, rancorous in thought, as never before. He had hitherto aimed at a picturesque tolerance of

her vindictiveness; under suffering, both at Craye and Creckholt; and he had been really forgiving. He

Her station in the chemist's shop he passed almost daily, appeared to him as a sudden and a terrific rush to the

front; though it was only a short drive from the house in Regent's Park; but having shakenoff that house, he

He shot away to the power he knew of in himself; his capacity for winning men in bodies, the host of them,

when it came to an effort of his energies: men and, individually, women. Individually, the women were to be

It was the admission of a doubt that he might expect to enrol them collectively. Eyeing the men, he felt his

command of them. Glancing at congregated women, he had a chill. The Wives and Spinsters in ghostly

judicial assembly: that is, the phantom of the offended collective woman: that is, the regnant Queen Idea

issuing from our concourse of civilized life to govern Society, and pronounce on the orderly, the tolerable,

the legal, and banish the rebellious: these maintained an aspect of the stand against him.

Did Nataly read the case: namely, that the crowned collective woman is not to be subdued? And what are we

to say of the indefinite but forcible Authority, when we see it upholding Mrs. Burman to crush a woman like

Victor's novel exercises in reflection were bringing him by hard degrees to conceive it to be the Impalpable

which has prevailing weight. Not many of our conquerors have scored their victories on the road of that

index: nor has duration been granted them to behold the minute measure of value left even tangible after the

dust of the conquest subsides. The passing by a shop where a broken old woman might be supposed to sit

beneath her green foreheadshadeVenetianblind of a henbane visage!had precipitated him into his

first real grasp of the abstract verity: and it opens on to new realms, which are a new world to the practical

mind. But he made no advance. He stopped in a fever of sensibility, to contemplate the powerful formless

vapour rolling from a source that was nothing other than yonder weak lonely woman.

In other words, the human nature of the man was dragged to the school of its truancy by circumstances, for

him to learn the commonest of sums done on a slate, in regard to payment of debts and the unrelaxing grip of

the creditor on the defaulter. Debtors are always paying: like those who are guilty of the easiest thing in life,

the violation of Truth, they have made themselves bondmen to pay, if not in substance, then in soul; and the

nipping of the soul goes on for as long as the concrete burden is undischarged. You know the Liar; you must

have seen him diminishing, until he has become a face without features, withdrawn to humanity's preliminary

sketch (some halfdozen frayed threads of woeful outline on our original tapestryweb); and he who did the

easiest of things, he must from such time sweat in being the prodigy of inventive nimbleness, up to the day

when he propitiates Truth by telling it again. There is a repentance that does reconstitute! It may help to the

tracing to springs of a fable whereby men have been guided thus far out of the wood.

Victor would have said truly that he loved Truth; that he paid every debt with a scrupulous exactitude:

money, of course; and prompt apologies for a short brush of his temper. Nay, he had such a conscience for

the smallest eruptions of a transient irritability, that the wish to say a friendly mending word to the Punctilio

donkey of London Bridge, softened his retrospective view of the fall there, more than once. Although this

man was a presentation to mankind of the force in Nature which drives to unresting speed, which is the

vitality of the heart seen at its beating after a plucking of it from the body, he knew himself for the reverse of

lawless; he inclined altogether to good citizenship. So social a man could not otherwise incline. But when it

came to the examination of accounts between Mrs. Burman and himself, spasms of physical revulsion,

loathings, his excessive human nature, put her out of Court. To men, it was impossible for him to speak the

torments of those days of the monstrous alliance. The heavens were cognizant. He pleaded his case in their

accustomed hearing:a youngster tempted by wealth, attracted, besought, snared, revolted, And Mrs.

Burman, when roused to jealousy, had shown it by teasing him for a confession of his admiration of splendid

points in the beautiful Nataly, the priceless fair woman living under their roof, a contrast of very life with the

corpse and shroud; and she seen by him daily, singing with him, her breath about him, her voice incessantly

He pleaded successfully. But the silence following the verdict was heavy; the silence contained an unheard

thunder. It was the sound, as when out of Court the public is dissatisfied with a verdict. Are we expected to

commit a social outrage in exposing our whole case to the public?Imagine it for a moment as done. Men

are ours at a wordor at least a word of invitation. Women we woo; fluent smooth versions of our tortures,

mixed with permissible courtship, win the individual woman. And that unreasoning collective woman, icy,

deadly, condemns the poor racked wretch who so much as remembers them! She is the enemy of

Nature.Tell us how? She is the slave of existing conventions.And from what cause? She is the artificial

production of a state that exalts her so long as she sacrifices daily and hourly to the artificial.

Therefore she sides with Mrs. Burmanthe foe of Nature: who, with her arts and gold lures, has now

possession of the Law (the brass idol worshipped by the collective) to drive Nature into desolation.

He placed himself to the right of Mrs. Burman, for the world to behold the couple: and he lent the world a

What he could not do, as in other matters he did, was to rise above the situation, in a splendid survey and

rapid view of the means of reversing it. He was too social to be a captain of the socially insurgent;

But having a courageous Nataly to second him!how then? It was the succour needed. Then he would have

been ready to teach the world that Naturehonest Natureis more to be prized than Convention: a new

The thought was tonic for an instant and illuminated him springingly. It sank, excused for the flaccidity by

Nataly's want of common adventurous daring. She had not taken to Lakelands; she was purchasing furniture

from a flowing purse with a heavy heartunfeminine, one might say; she preferred to live obscurely; she did

not, one had to thinkbut it was unjust: and yet the accusation, that she did not cheerfully make a strain and

These short glimpses at reflection in Victor were like the verberant twang of a musical instrument that has

had a smart blow, and wails away independent of the player's cunning hand. He would have said, that he was

more his natural self when the cunning hand played on him, to make him praise and uplift his beloved:

mightily would it have astonished him to contemplate with assured perception in his own person the Nature

he invoked. But men invoking Nature, do not find in her the Holy Mother she in such case becomes to her

daughters, whom she so persecutes. Men call on her for their defence, as a favourable witness: she is a note of

their rhetoric. They are not bettered by her sustainment; they have not, as women may have, her en�mic aid

at a trying hour. It is not an effort at epigram to say, that whom she scourges most she most supports.

"How Wagner seems to have stricken the Italians! Well, now, the Germans have their emperor to head their

armies, and I say that the German emperor has done less for their lasting fame and influence than Wagner has

done. He has affected the French too; I trace him in Gounod's Romeo et Julietteand we don't gain by it; we

have a poor remuneration for the melody gone; think of the little shepherd's piping in Mireille; and there's

another in Saphodelicious. I held out against Wagner as long as I could. The Italians don't much more than

Wagnerize in exchange for the loss of melody. They would be wiser in going back to Pergolese, Campagnole.

The Mefistofile was goodof the school of the foreign master. A�da and Otello, no. I confess to a weakness

for the old barleysugar of Bellini or a Donizetti Serenade. Aren't you seduced by cadences? Never mind

Wagner's tap of his p�dagogue's b�tona cadence catches me still. Early taste for barleysugar, perhaps!

There's a march in Verdi's Attila and I Lombardi, I declare I'm in military step when I hear them, as in the old

days, after leaving the Opera. Fredi takes little Mab Mountney to her first Opera tonight. Enough to make us

old ones envious! You remember your first Opera, Fenellan? Sonnambula, with me. I tell you, it would task

the highest poetrysay, require, if you likeshowing all that's noblest, splendidest, in a young man, to

describe its effect on me. I was dreaming of my box at the Opera for a year after. The Huguenots tonight.

Not the best suited for little Mabsy; but she'll catch at the Rataplan. Capital Opera; we used to think it the

Victor hinted notes of the Conspiration Scene closing the Third Act of the Huguenots. That sombre Chorus

brought Mrs. Burman before him. He drummed the Rataplan, which sent her flying. The return of a lively

disposition for dinner and music completed his emancipation from the yoke of the baleful creature sitting half

her days in the chemist's shop; save that a thought of drugs brought the smell, and the smell the picture; she

threatened to be an apparition at any amount pervading him through his nostrils. He spoke to Fenellan of

hunger for dinner, a need for it; singular in one whose appetite ran to the stroke of the hour abreast with

Armandine's kitchen clock. Fenellan proposed a glass of sherry and bitters at his Club over the way. He had

forgotten a shower of blackballs (attributable to the conjurations of old At�) on a certain past day. Without

word of refusal, Victor entered a winemerchant's office, where he was unknown, and stating his wish for

bitters and dry sherry, presently received the glass, drank, nodded to the administering clerk, named the

person whom he had obliged and refreshed, and passed out, remarking to Fenellan: "Colney on Clubs! he's

right; they're the medi�val in modern times, our Baron's castles, minus the Baron; dead against public life

and social duties. Business excuses my City Clubs; but I shall take my name off my Club up West."

"More like monasteries, with a Committee for Abbot, and Whist for the services," Fenellan said. "Or

tabernacles for the Chosen, and Grangousier playing Divinity behind the veil. Well, they're social."

"Sectionally social, means anything but social, my friend. Howeverand the monastery had a bell for the

wanderer! Say, I'm penniless or poundless, up and down this walled desert of a street, I feel, I must feel, these

palacesif we're Christian, not Jews: not that the Jews are uncharitable; they set an example, in fact. . . ."

He rambled, amusingly to the complacent hearing of Fenellan, who thought of his pursuit of wealth and grand

Victor talked as a man having his mind at leaps beyond the subject. He was nearing to the Idea he had seized

The desire for some good news wherewith to inspirit Nataly, withdrew him from his ineffectual chase. He

had nought to deliver; on the contrary, a meditation concerning her comfort pledged him to concealment:

With Dr. Themison fast in his grasp, there was a report of progress to be made to Nataly; and not at all an

Themison, then: he leaned on Themison. The woman's doctor should have an influence approaching to

Landvalues in the developing Colonies, formed his theme of discourse to Fenellan: let Banks beware.

Fenellan saw him shudder and rub the back of his head. "Feel the wind?" he said.

Victor answered him with that humane thrill of the deep tones, which at times he had: "No: don't be alarmed;

I feel the devil. If one has wealth and a desperate wish, he will speak. All he does, is to make me more

"You know that Armandine is never two minutes late. By the way, you haven't wealthyou have me."

"And I thank God for you!" said Fenellan, acutely reminiscent of his having marked the spiritual adviser of

A FORTNIGHT later, an extremely disconcerting circumstance occurred: Armandine was ten minutes behind

the hour with her dinner. But the surprise and stupefaction expressed by Victor, after glances at his watch,

were not so profound as Fenellan's, on finding himself exchanging the bow with a gentleman bearing the

name of Dr. Themison. His friend's rapidity in pushing the combinations he conceived, was known:

Fenellan's wonder was not so much that Victor had astonished him again, as that he should be called upon

again to wonder at his astonishment. He did; and he observed the doctor and Victor and Nataly: aided by

dropping remarks. Before the evening was over, he gathered enough of the facts, and had to speculate only on

the designs. Dr. Themison had received a visit from the husband of Mrs. Victor Radnor concerning her state

of health. At an interview with the lady, laughter greeted him; he was confused by her denial of the

imputation of a single ailment: but she, to recompose him, let it be understood, that she was anxious about her

husband's condition, he being certainly overworked; and the husband's visit passed for a device on the part of

the wife. She admitted a willingness to try a change of air, if it was deemed good for her husband. Change of

air was prescribed to each for both. "Why not drive to Paris?" the doctor said, and Victor was taken with the

He told Fenellan at night that Mrs. Burman, he had heard, was by the sea, on the South coast. Which of her

maladies might be in the ascendant, he did not know. He knew little. He fancied that Dr. Themison was

unsuspicious of the existence of a relationship between him and Mrs. Burman: and Fenellan opined, that there

had been no communication upon private affairs. What, then, was the object in going to Dr. Themison? He

treated her body merely; whereas the Rev. Groseman Buttermore could be expected to impose upon her

conduct. Fenellan appreciated his own discernment of the superior uses to which a spiritual adviser may be

put, and he too agreeably flattered himself for the corrective reflection to ensue, that he had not done

anything. It disposed him to think a happy passivity more sagacious than a restless activity. We should let

Fortune perform her part at the wheel in working out her ends, should we not?for, ten to one, nine times

out of ten we are thwarting her if we stretch out a hand. And with the range of enjoyments possessed by

Victor, why this unceasing restlessness? Why, when we are not near drowning, catch at apparent straws,

which may be instruments having sharp edges? Themison, as Mrs. Burman's medical man, might tell the lady

tales that would irritate her bag of venom. Rarely though Fenellan was the critic on his friend, the shadow

cast over his negligent hedonism by Victor's boiling pressure, drove him into the seat of judgement. As a

consequence, he was rather a dull tableguest in the presence of Dr. Themison, whom their host had pricked

to anticipate high entertainment from him. He did nothing to bridge the crevasse and warm the glacier air at

table when the doctor, anecdotal intentionally to draw him out, related a decorous but pungent story of one

fair member of a sweet new sisterhood in agitation against the fixed establishment of our chainmail

marriagetie. An anecdote of immediate diversion was wanted, expected: and Fenellan sat stupidly

speculating upon whether the doctor knew of a cupboard locked. So that Dr. Themison was carried on by

Lady Grace Halley's humorous enthusiasm for the subject to dilate and discuss and specify, all in the irony of

a judicial leaning to the side of the singleminded social adventurers, under an assumed accord with his

"By the trick of multiplication," Fenellan, now reassured, was content to say. And that did not extinguish the

cracker of a theme; handled very carefully, as a thing of fire, it need scarce be remarked, three young women

Nataly had eyes on her girl, and was pleased at an alertness shown by Mr. Sowerby to second her by crossing

the dialogue. As regarded her personal feelings, she was hardened, so long as the curtains were about her to

keep the world from bending black brows of inquisition upon one of its culprits. But her anxiety was vigilant

to guard her girl from an infusion of any of the dread facts of life not coming through the mother's lips: and

she was a woman having the feminine mind's pudency in that direction, which does not consent to the

revealing of much. Here was the mother's dilemma: her girlVictor's girl, as she had to think in this

instance,the most cloudless of the young women of earth, seemed, and might be figured as really, at the

falling of a crumb off the table of knowledge, taken by the brain to shoot up to terrific heights of surveyal;

and there she rocked; and only her youthful healthiness brought her down to grass and flowers. She had once

or twice received the electrical stimulus, to feel and be as lightning, from a seizure of facts in infinitesimal

doses, guesses caught off maternal evasions or the circuitous explanation of matters touching sex in here and

there a newspaper, harder to repress completely than sewergas in great cities: and her mother had seen, with

an apprehensive pang of anguish, how witheringly the scared young intelligence of the innocent creature

shocked her sensibility. She foresaw the need to such a flameful soul, as bride, wife, woman across the world,

of the very princeliest of men in gifts of strength, for her sustainer and guide. And the provident mother knew

Delusions and the pain of the disillusioning were to be feared for the imaginative Nesta; though not so much

as that on some future day of a perchance miserable yokematinga subjection or an entanglementthe

nobler passions might be summoned to rise for freedom, and strike a line to make their logically estimable

sequence from a source not honourable before the public. Constantly it had to be thought, that the girl was her

At present she had no passions; and her bent to the happiness she could so richly give, had drawn her sailing

smoothly over the harbourbar of maidenhood; where many of her sisters are disconcerted to the loss of

simplicity. If Nataly with her sleepless watchfulness and forecasts partook of the French mother, Nesta's

Arcadian independence likened her somewhat in manner to the Transatlantic version of the English girl. Her

high physical animation and the burden of themes it plucked for delivery carried her flowing over

impediments of virginal selfconsciousness, to set her at her ease in the talk with men; she had not gone

through the various Nursery exercises in dissimulation; she had no appearance of praying forgiveness of men

for the original sin of being woman; and no tricks of lips or lids, or traitor scarlet on the cheeks, or

assumptions of the frigid mask, or indicated reservecajoleries. Neither ignorantly nor advisedly did she play

on these or other bewitching strings of her sex, after the fashion of the stamped innocents, who are the boast

of Englishmen and matrons, and thrill societies with their winsome ingenuousness; and who sometimes when

unguarded meet an artful serenader, that is a cloaked bandit, and is provoked by their performances, and

knows anthropologically the nature behind the devious show; a sciential rascal; as little to be excluded from

our modern circles as Eve's own old deuce from Eden's garden: whereupon, opportunity inviting, both the

fool and the cunning, the pure donkey princess of insular eulogy, and the sham one, are in a perilous pass.

Damsels of the swiftness of mind of Nesta cannot be ignorant utterly amid a world where the hints are hourly

scattering seed of the inklings; when vileness is at work up and down our thoroughfares, proclaiming its

existence with tableau and trumpet. Nataly encountered her girl's questions, much as one seeks to quiet an

enemy. The questions had soon ceased. Excepting repulsive and rejected details, there is little to be learnt

when a little is known: in populous communities, density only will keep the little out. Only stupidity will

suppose that it can be done for the livelier young. English mothers forethoughtful for their girls, have to take

choice of how to do battle with a roughandtumble Old England, that lumbers bumping along, craving the

precious things, which can be had but in semblance under the conditions allowed by laziness to subsist, and

so curst of its shifty inconsequence as to worship in the concrete an hypocrisy it abhors in the abstract. Nataly

could smuggle or confiscate here and there a newspaper; she could not interdict or withhold every one of

them, from a girl ardent to be in the race on all topics of popular interest: and the newspapers are occasionally

naked savages; the streets are imperfectly garmented even by day; and we have our stumbling social

anecdotist, our spoutmouthed young man, our eminently silly woman; our slippery one; our slimy one, the

Rahab of Society; not to speak of Mary the maid and the footman William. A vigilant mother has to contend

There is a method: one that Colney Durance advocated. The girl's intelligence and sweet blood invited a trial

of it. Since, as he argued, we cannot keep the poisonous matter out, mothers should prepare and strengthen

young women for the encounter with it, by lifting the veil, baring the world, giving them knowledge to arm

them for the fight they have to sustain; and thereby preserve them further from the spiritual collapse which

follows the nursing of a false ideal of our life in youth: this being, Colney said, the prominent feminine

disease of the time, common to all our women; that is, all having leisure to shine in the sun or wave in the

Whatever there was of wisdom in his view, he spoilt it for English hearing, by making use of his dry

compressed sentences. Besides he was a bachelor; therefore but a theorist. And his illustrations of his theory

were grotesque; meditation on them extracted a corrosive acid to consume, in horrid derision, the sex, the

nation, the race of man. The satirist too devotedly loves his lash to be a persuasive teacher. Nataly had

One reason was, as she discerned through her confusion at the thought, that the day drew near for her

speaking fully to Nesta; when, between what she then said and what she said now, a cruel contrast might

strike the girl: and in toning revelations now, to be more consonant with them then;in softening and

shading the edges of social misconduct, it seemed painfully possible to be sowing in the girl's mind

something like the reverse of moral precepts, even to smoothing the way to a rebelliousness partly or wholly

similar to her own. But Nataly's chief and her appeasing reason for pursuing the conventional system with

this exceptional young creature, referred to the sentiments on that subject of the kind of young man whom a

mother elects from among those present and eligible, as perhaps next to worthy to wed the girl, by virtue of

good promise in the moral department. She had Mr. Dudley Sowerby under view; far from the man of her

choice: and still the practice of decorum, discretion, a pardonable fastidiousness, appears, if women may

make any forecast of the behaviour of young men or may trust the faces they see, to promise a future stability

in the husband. Assuredly a Dudley Sowerby would be immensely startled to find in his bride a young

woman more than babily aware of the existence of one particular form of naughtiness on earth.

Victor was of no help; he had not an idea upon the right education of the young of the sex. Repression and

mystery, he considered wholesome for girls; and he considered the enlightening of themto some extenta

prudential measure for their defence; and premature instruction is a firewater to their wildinwoods

understanding; and histrionic innocence is no doubt the bloom on corruption; also the facts of current human

life, in the crude of the reports or the cooked of the sermon in the newspapers, are a noxious diet for our

daughters; whom nevertheless we cannot hope to be feeding always on milk: and there is a time when their

adorable pretty ignorance, if credibly it exists out of noodledom, is harmful:but how beautiful the shining

simplicity of our dear young English girls!He was one of the many men to whose minds women come in

pictures and are accepted much as they paint themselves. Like his numerous fellows, too, he required a

conflict with them, and a worsting at it, to be taught, that they are not the mere live stock we scheme to

dispose of for their good:unless Love should interpose, he would have exclaimed. He broke from his

fellows in his holy horror of a father's running counter to love. Nesta had only to say, that she loved another,

for Dudley Sowerby to be withdrawn into the background of aspirants. But love was unknown to the girl.

Outwardly, the plan of the Drive to Paris had the look of Victor's traditional hospitality. Nataly smiled at her

incorrigibly lagging intelligence of him, on hearing that he had invited a company: "Lady Grace, for gaiety;

Peridon and Catkin, fiddles; Dudley Sowerby and myself, flutes; Barmby, intonation; in all, nine of us; and

by the dear old Normandy route, for the sake of the voyage, as in old times; towers of Dieppe in the

morninglight; and the lovely road to the capital! Just three days in Paris, and home by any of the other

routes. It's the drive we want. Boredom in wet weather, we defy; we have our Concertan hour at night and

we're sure of sleep." It had a sweet simple air, befitting him; as when in bygone days they travelled with the

joy of children. For travelling shook Nataly out of her troubles and gave her something of the child's

inheritance of the wisdom of lifethe living ever so little ahead of ourselves; about as far as the fox in view

of the hunt. That is the soul of us out for novelty, devouring as it runs, an endless feast; and the body is

eagerly after it, recording the pleasures, a daily chase. Remembrance of them is almost a renewal,

anticipation a revival. She enraptured Victor with glimpses of the domestic fun she had ceased to show sign

of since the revelation of Lakelands. Her only regret was on account of the exclusion of Colney Durance from

the party, because of happy memories associating him with the Seineland, and also that his bilious criticism

of his countrymen was moderated by a trip to the Continent. Fenellan reported Colney to be "busy in the act

of distilling one of his Prussic acid essays." Fenellan would have jumped to go. He informed Victor, as a

probe, that the business of the Life Insurance was at periods "fearfully necrological." Inexplicably, he was not

invited. Did it mean, that he was growing dull? He looked inside instead of out, and lost the clue.

His behaviour on the evening of the departure showed plainly what would have befallen Mr. Sowerby on the

expedition, had not he as well as Colney been excluded. Two carriages and a cab conveyed the excursionists,

as they merrily called themselves, to the terminus. They were Victor's guests; they had no trouble, no

expense, none of the nipper reckonings which dog our pleasures;the state of pure bliss. Fenellan's

enviousness drove him at the Rev. Mr. Barmby until the latter jumped to the seat beside Nesta in her carriage,

Mademoiselle de Seilles and Mr. Sowerby facing them. Lady Grace Halley, in the carriage behind, heard

Nesta's laugh; which Mr. Barmby had thought vacuous, beseeming little girls, that laugh at nothings. She

"Oh," said he, "I merely mentioned that the Rev. gentleman carries his musical instrument at the bottom of

"Your fiddles are in the cab, in charge of Peridon and Catkin. Those two would have writhed like head and

tail of a worm, at a division on the way to the station. Point a finger at Peridon, you run Catkin through the

Nataly strongly denied it. Peridon and Catkin pertained to their genial picture of the dear sweet nest in life; a

Fenellan then, to prove that he could be as bad in his way as Colney, fell to work on the absent Miss Priscilla

Graves and Mr. Pempton, with a pitchfork's exaltation of the sacred attachment of the divergently meritorious

couple, and a melancholy reference to implacable obstacles in the principles of each. The pair were offending

the amatory corner in the generous good sense of Nataly and Victor; they were not to be hotly protected,

though they were well enough liked for their qualities, except by Lady Grace, who revelled in the horrifying

and scandalizing of Miss Graves. Such a specimen of the Puritan middle English as Priscilla Graves, was

eastwind on her skin, nausea to her gorge. She wondered at having drifted into the neighbourhood of a person

resembling in her repellent formal chill virtuousness a windy belfry tower, down among those districts of

suburban London or appalling provincial towns passed now and then with a shudder, where the funereal

square bricksup the Church, that Arctic henmother sits on the square, and the moving dead are summoned

to their round of penitential exercise by a monosyllabic tribulationbell. Fenellan's graphic sketch of the

teetotaller woman seeing her admirer pursued by Eumenides flagonsabominations of emptinessto the

banks of the black river of suicides, where the one most wretched light is Inebriation's nose; and of the

vegetarian violoncello's horror at his vision of the long procession of the flocks and herds into his lady's

melodious Ark of a mouth, excited and delighted her antipathy. She was amused to transports at the station,

on hearing Mr. Barmby, in a voice all ophicleide, remark: "No, I carry no instrument." The habitation of it at

Reclining in warmth on the deck of the vessel at night, she said, just under Victor's ear: "Where are those

She rejoined: "Silly man;" and sleepily gave him her hand for good night, and so paralyzed his arm, that he

had to cover the continued junction by saying more than he intended: "If they come to an understanding!"

"This is really my favourite route; I love the saltwater and the night on deck."

Positively the contrary, an impulsive squeeze of fingers declared it; and they broke the link, neither of them

sensibly hurt; though a leaf or two of the ingenuities, which were her thoughts, turned over in the phantasies

of the lady; and the gentleman was taught to feel that a never so slightly lengthened compression of the hand

female shoots within us both straight and far and round the corners. There you have Nature, if you want her

naked in her elements, for a text. He loved his Nataly truly, even fervently, after the twenty years of union; he

looked about at no other woman; it happened only that the touch of one, the chance warm touch, put to

motion the blind forces of our mother so remarkably surcharging him. But it was without kindling. The lady,

the much cooler person, did nurse a bit of flame. She had a whimsical liking for the man who enjoyed simple

things when commanding the luxuries; and it became a fascination, by extreme contrast, at the reminder of

his adventurous enterprises in progress while he could so childishly enjoy. Women who dance with the

warrior winner of battles, and hear him talk his ballroom trifles to amuse, have similarly a smell of

For him, a turn on the deck brought him into new skies. Nataly lay in the cabin. She used to be where Lady

Grace was lying. A sort of pleadable, transparent, harmless hallucination of the renewal of old service

induced him to refresh and settle the fair semislumberer's pillow, and fix the tarpaulin over her silks and

wraps; and bend his head to the soft mouth murmuring thanks. The women who can dare the nuit blanche,

and under stars; and have a taste for holiday larks after their thirtieth, are rare; they are precious. Nataly

nevertheless was approved for guarding her throat from the nightwind. And a softer southerly breath never

Nesta sat by the rails of the vessel beside her Louise. Mr. Sowerby in passing, exchanged a description of

printed agreement with her, upon the beauty of the nighta good neutral topic for the encounter of the sexes,

not that he wanted it neutral; it furnished him with a vocabulary. Once he perceptibly washed his hands of

dutiful politeness, in addressing Mademoiselle de Seilles, likewise upon the beauty of the night; and the

French lady, thinkingtoo conclusively from the breath on the glass at the moment, as it is the Gallic

habitthat, if her dear Nesta must espouse one of the uninteresting creatures called men in her native land, it

"He speaks grammatical French," Nesta commented on his achievement. "He contrives in his walking not to

Mr. Peridon was a more welcome sample of the islanders, despite an, inferior pretension to accent. He burned

to be near these ladies, and he passed them but once. His enthusiasm for Mademoiselle de Seilles was

notorious. Gratefully the compliment was acknowledged by her, in her demure fashion; with a reserve of

comic intellectual contempt for the man who could not see that women, or Frenchwomen, or eminently she

among them, must have their enthusiasm set springing in the breast before they can be swayed by the most

violent of outer gales. And say, that she is uprooted;he does but roll a log. Mr. Peridon's efforts to perfect

A night of May leaning on June, is little more than a deliberate wink of the eye of light. Mr. Barmby, an exile

from the ladies by reason of an addiction to tobacco, quitted the forepart of the vessel at the first greying.

Now was the cloak of night worn threadbare, and grey astir for the heralding of gold, day visibly ready to

show its warmer throbs. The gentle waves were just a stronger grey than the sky, perforce of an interfusion

that shifted gradations; they were silken, in places oily grey; cold to drive the sight across their playful

Miss Radnor was asleep, eyelids benignly down, lips mildly closed. The girl's cheeks held colour to match a

dawn yet unawakened though born. They were in a nest shading amid silks of pale blue, and there was a

languid flutter beneath her chin to the catch of the mornbreeze. Bacchanal threads astray from a disorderly

frontlock of rich brown hair were alive over an eyebrow showing like a seal upon the lightest and securest

Mr. Barmby gazed, and devoutly. Both the ladies were in their oblivion; the younger quite saintly; but the

couple inseparably framed, elevating to behold; a reproach to the reminiscence of pipes. He was near; and

quietly the eyelids of mademoiselle lifted on him. Her look was grave, straight, uninquiring, soon accurately

perusing; an arrow of Artemis for penetration. He went by, with the sound in the throat of a startled

bushbird taking to wing; he limped off some nail of the deck, as if that young Frenchwoman had turned the

foot to a hoof. Man could not be more guiltless, yet her look had perturbed him; nails conspired; in his

Nesta woke babbling on the subject she had relinquished for sleep. Mademoiselle touched a feathery finger at

Mr. Sowerby presented the risen morning to them, with encomiums, after they had been observing every

variation in it. He spoke happily of the pleasant passage, and of the agreeable night; particularly of the

excellent idea of the expedition by this long route at night; the prospect of which had disfigured him with his

grimace of speculationapparently a sourness that did not exist. Nesta had a singular notion, coming of a

girl's mingled observation and intuition, that the impressions upon this gentleman were in arrear, did not

strike him till late. Mademoiselle confirmed it when it was mentioned; she remembered to have noticed the

Victor sent his girl down to Nataly, with a summons to hurry up and see sunlight over the waters. Nataly

came; she looked, and the outer wakened the inner, she let the light look in on her, her old feelings danced to

her eyes like a string of bubbles in ascent. "Victor, Victor, it seems only yesterday that we crossed, twelve

years backwas it?and in May, and saw the shoal of porpoises, and five minutes after, Dieppe in view.

"Home of our holidays!the `drives;' and they may be the happiest. And fifty minutes later we were off the

harbour: and Natata landed, a stranger; and at night she was the heroine of the town."

Victor turned to a stately gentleman and passed his name to Nataly: "Sir Rodwell Blachington, a neighbour of

Lakelands." She understood that Lady Grace Halley was acquainted with Sir Rodwell:hence this dash of

brine to her lips while she was drinking of happy memories, and Victor evidently was pluming himself upon

his usual luck in the fortuitous encounter with an influential neighbour of Lakelands. He told Sir Rodwell the

story of how they had met in the salle � manger of the hotel the impresario of a Concert in the town, who had

in his hand the doctor's certificate of the incapacity of the chief cantatrice to appear, and waved it, within a

step of suicide. "Well, to be brief, my wife`noble dame Anglaise,' as the man announced her on the

Concert platform, undertook one of the songs, and sang another of her ownpure contralto voice, as you

will say; with the result that there was a perfect tumult of enthusiasm. Next day, the waiters of the hotel

presented her with a bouquet of Spring flowers, white, and central violets. It was in the Paris papers, under

He glanced at her: a cloud had risen. He rallied her, spoke of the old Norman silver cross which the manager

of the Concert had sent, humbly imploring her to accept the small memento of his gratitude. She nodded an

And there was the coast of France under young sunlight over the waters. Once more her oftpetitioning wish

through the years, that she had entered the ranks of professional singers, upon whom the moral scrutiny is not

so microscopic, invaded her, resembling a tideswell into rockcaves, which have been filled before and left

to emptiness, and will be left to emptiness again. Nataly had the intimation visiting us when, in a decline of

physical power, the mind's ready vivacity to conjure illusions forsakes us; and it was, of a wall ahead, and a

force impelling her against it, and no hope of deviation. And this is the featureless thing, Destiny; not without

Counsel to her to live in the hour, came, as upon others on the vessel, from an active breath of the salt

prompting to healthy hunger; and hardly less from the splendour of the low full sunlight on the waters, the

skimming and dancing of the thousands of golden shells away from under the globe of fire.

NINE days after his master's departure, Daniel Skepsey, a man of some renown of late, as a subject of reports

and comments in the newspapers, obtained a passport, for the identification, if need were, of his missing or

misapprehended person in a foreign country, of the language of which three unpronounceable words were

knocking about his head to render the thought of the passport a staff of safety; and on the morning that

followed he was at speed through Normandy, to meet his master rounding homeward from Paris, at a town

not to be spoken as it is written, by reason of the custom of the good people of the country, with whom we

would fain live on neighbourly terms: yes, and they had proof of it, not so very many years back, when

they were enduring the worst which can befall us:though Mr. Durance, to whom he was indebted for the

writing of the place of his destination large on a card, and the wording of the French sound beside it, besides

the jotting down of trains and the station for the change of railways, Mr. Durance could say, that the active

form of our sympathy consisted in the pouring of cheeses upon them when they were prostrate and unable to

A kind gentleman, Mr. Durance, as Daniel Skepsey had recent cause to know, but often exceedingly dark; not

so patriotic as desireable, it was to be feared; and yet, strangely indeed, Mr. Durance had said cogent things

on the art of boxing and on manly exercises, and he hopedhe was emphatic in saying he hopedwe

should be regenerated. He must have meant, that boxing on a grand scale would contribute to it. He said, that

a blow now and then was wholesome for us all. He recommended a monthly private whipping for old

gentlemen who decline the use of the gloves, to disperse their humours; not excluding Judges and

Magistrates:he could hardly be in earnest. He spoke in a clergyman's voice, and said it would be payment

of good assurance money, beneficial to their souls: he seemed to mean it. He said, that old gentlemen were

bottled vapours, and it was good for them to uncork them periodically. He said, they should be excused half

the strokes if they danced nightlythey resented motion. He seemed sadly wanting in veneration.

But he might, not positively intend what he said. Skepsey could overlook everything he said, except the

girding at England. For where is a braver people, notwithstanding appearances! Skepsey knew of dozens of

gallant bruisers, ready for the cry to strip to the belt; worthy, with a little public encouragement, to rank

beside their grandfathers of the Ring, in the brilliant times when royalty and nobility countenanced the manly

art, our nursery of heroes, and there was not the existing unhappy division of classes. He still trusted to

convince Mr. Durance, by means of argument and happy instances, historical and immediate, that the English

may justly consider themselves the elect of nations, for reasons better than their accumulation of the piles of

goldbetter than "usurers' reasons," as Mr. Durance called them. Much that Mr. Durance had said at

intervals was, although remembered almost to the letter of the phrase, beyond his comprehension, and he put

All the while, he was hearing a rattle of voluble tongues around him, and a shout of stations, intelligible as a

wash of pebbles, and blocks in a torrent. Generally the men slouched when they were not running. At Dieppe

he had noticed muscular fellows; he admitted them to be nimbler on the legs than ours; and that may count

both ways, he consoled a patriotic vanity by thinking; instantly rebuking the thought; for he had read chapters

of Military History. He sat eyeing the front row of figures in his thirdclass carriage, musing on the kind of

soldiers we might, heaven designing it, have to face, and how to beat them, until he gazed on Rouen,

knowing by the size of it and by what Mr. Durance had informed him of the city on the river, that it must be

the very City of Rouen, not so many years back a violated place, at the mercy of a foreign foe. Strong pity

laid hold of Skepsey. He fortified the heights for defence, but saw at a glance that it was the city for modern

artillery to command, crush and enter. He lost idea of these afflicted foes, merely complaining of their attacks

on England, and their menaces in their Journals and pamphlets; and he renounced certain views of the

country to be marched over on the road by this route to Paris, for the dictation of terms of peace at the gates

of the French capital, sparing them the shameful entry; and this after the rout of their attempt at an invasion of

A man opposite him was looking amicably on his lively grey eyes. Skepsey handed a card from his pocket.

The man perused it, and crying: "Dreux?" waved out of the carriagewindow at a westerly distance, naming

Rouen as not the place, not at all, totally other. Thus we are taught, that a foreign General, ignorant of the

language, must confine himself to defensive operations at home; he would be a child in the hands of the

commonest man he meets. Brilliant with thanks in signs, Skepsey drew from his friend a course of instruction

in French names, for our necessities on a line of march. The roads to Great Britain's metropolis, and the

supplies of forage and provision at every stage of a march on London, are marked in the military offices of

these people; and that, with their barking Journals, is a piece of knowledge to justify a belligerent return for

Fervently we pray it when this good man, a total stranger to us, conducts an ignorant foreigner from one

station to another through the streets of Rouen, after a short stoppage at the buffet and assistance in the

And why be dealing wounds and death? It is a more blessed thing to keep the Commandments. But how is it

Martha Skepsey had given him a son to show the hereditary energy in his crying and coughing; and it was

owing, he could plead, to her habits and her tongue, that he sometimes, that he might avoid the doing of

worsefor she wanted correction and was improved by itcourted the excitement of a short exhibition of

skill, man to man, on publicans' first floors. He could have told the magistrate so, in part apology for the

circumstances dragging him the other day, so recently, before his Worship; and he might have told it, if he

had not remembered Captain Dartrey Fenellan's words about treating women chivalrously: which was

interpreted by Skepsey as correcting them, when called upon to do it, but never exposing them:only, if

allowed to account for the circumstances pushing us into the newspapers, we should not present so guilty a

Furthermore, as to how far it is the duty of a man to serve his master, there is likewise question: whether is

he, while receiving reproof and punishment for excess of zeal in the service of his master, not to mention the

welfare of the country, morallywithout establishing it as a principle exonerated? Miss Graves might be

asked: save that one would not voluntarily trouble a lady on such subjects. But supposing says the opposing

counsel, now at work in Skepsey's conscience, supposing this act, for which, contravening the law of the

land, you are reproved and punished, to be agreeable to you, how then? We answer, supposing itand we

take uncomplainingly the magistrate's reproof and punishmentmorally justified: can it be expected of us to

have the sense of guilt, although we wear and know we wear a guilty look before the public?

His master and the dear ladies would hear of it; perhaps they knew of it now; with them would rest the

settlement of the distressing inquiry. The ladies would be shocked: ladies cannot bear any semblance of

roughness, not even with the gloves:and knowing, as they must, that our practice of the manly art is for

Skepsey's grievous prospect of the hour to come under judgement of a sex that was ever a riddle unread,

clouded him on the approach to Dreux. He studied the country and the people eagerly; he forbore to conduct

great military operations. Mr. Durance had spoken of big battles round about the town of Dreux; also of a

wonderful Mausoleum there, not equally interesting. The little man was in deeper gloom than a day sobering

on crimson dusk when the train stopped and his quick ear caught the sound of the station, as pronounced by

He handed his card to the stationmaster. A glance, and the latter signalled to a porter, saying: "Paradis;" and

the porter laid hold of Skepsey's bag. Skepsey's grasp was firm; he pulled, the porter pulled. Skepsey heard

explanatory speech accompanying a wrench. He wrenched back with vigour, and in his own tongue

explained, that he held to the bag because his master's letters were in the bag, all the way from England. For a

minute, there was a downright trial of muscle and will: the porter appeared furiously excited, Skepsey had a

look of cooled steel. Then the Frenchman, requiring to shrug, gave way to the Englishman's eccentric

obstinacy, and signified that he was his guide. Quite so, and Skepsey showed alacrity and confidence in

following; he carried his bag. But with the remembrance of the kindly serviceable man at Rouen, he sought to

convey to the porter, that the terms of their association were cordial. A waving of the right hand to the

heavens ratified the treaty on the French side. Nods and smiles and gesticulations, with acrossChannel

vocables, as it were Dover cliffs to Calais sands and back, pleasantly beguiled the way down to the Hotel du

Paradis, under the Mausoleum heights, where Skepsey fumbled at his pocket for coin current; but the

Frenchman, all shaken by a tornado of negation, clapped him on the shoulder, and sang him a quatrain.

Skepsey had in politeness to stand listening, and blinking, plunged in the contrition of ignorance, eclipsed. He

took it to signify something to the effect, that money should not pass between friends. It was the amatory

Au champ de Mars," the Frenchman, in a backing of measured steps, apologized for his enforced withdrawal

Skepsey's card was taken in the passage of the hotel. A cleancapped maid, brave on the legs, like all he had

seen of these people, preceded him at quick march to an upper chamber. When he descended, bag in hand,

she flung open the salondoor of a table d'h�te, where a goodly number were dining and chattering; waiters

drew him along to the section occupied by his master's party. A chair had been kept vacant for him; his

master waved a hand, his dear ladies graciously smiled; he stuck the bag in front of a guardian foot, growing

happy. He could fancy they had not seen the English newspapers. And his next observation of the table

showed him wrecked and lost: Miss Nesta's face was the oval of a woeful O at his wild behaviour in England

during their absence. She smiled. Skepsey had nevertheless to consume his foodexcellent, very tasty

soup with the sour sauce of the thought that he must be tonguetied in his defence for the time of the

He answered confusedly, trying to assure her that he was doing so, and he choked.

His master had fixed his arrival for twenty minutes earlier. Skepsey spoke through a cough of long delays at

stations. The Rev. Septimus Barmby, officially peacemaker, sounded the consequent excuse for a belated

comer. It was final; such is the power of sound. Looks were cast from the French section of the table at the

owner of the prodigious organ. Some of the younger men, intent on the charms of Albion's daughters,

expressed in a sign and a word or two alarm at what might be beneath the flooring: and "Pas encore Lui!" and

"Son avantcourier!" and other flies of speech passed on a whiff, under politest of cover, not to give offence.

Our English, at the close of the dinner, consented to say it was good, without specifying a dish, because a

selection of this or that would have seemed to italicize, and commit them, in the presence of ladies, to a

notice of the matterofcourse, beneath us, or the confession of a low sensual enjoyment; until Lady Grace

Halley named the particular dressing of a t�te de veau approvingly to Victor; and he stating, that he had

offered a suggestion for the menu of the day, Nataly exclaimed, that she had suspected it: upon which Mr.

Sowerby praised the menu, Mr. Barmby, Peridon and Catkin named other dishes, there was the right

afterdinner ring in Victor's ears, thanks to the woman of the world who had travelled round to nature and led

the shackled men to deliver themselves heartily. One tap, and they are free. That is, in the moments after

dinner, when nature is at the gates with them. Only, it must be a lady and a prevailing lady to give the tap.

They need (our English) and will for the ages of the process of their transformation need a queen.

He was presently back, to remain with the ladies during his master's perusal of letters. Nataly had decreed

that he was not to be troubled; so Nesta and mademoiselle besought him for a recital of his French

adventures; and strange to say, he had nothing to tell. The journey, pregnant at the start, exciting in the course

of it, was absolutely blank at the termination. French people had been very kind; he could not say more. But

there was more; there was a remarkable fulness, if only he could subordinate it to narrative. The little man did

not know, that time was wanted for imagination to make the roadway or riverway of a true story, unless we

press to invent; his mind had been too busy on the way for him to clothe in speech his impressions of the

passage of incidents at the call for them. Things had happened, numbers of interesting minor things, but they

all slipped as water through the fingers; and he being of the band of honest creatures who will not accept a lift

from fiction, drearily he sat before the ladies, confessing to an emptiness he was far from feeling.

Nesta professed excessive disappointment. "Now, if it had been in England, Skips!" she said, under her

And women, when they are such ladies as these, are sent to prove to us that they can be a blessing; instead of

the dreadful cry to Providence for the reason of the spread of the race of man by their means! He declared his

readiness, rejecting excuses, to state his case to them, but for his fear of having it interpreted as an appeal for

their kind aid in obtaining his master's forgiveness. Mr. Durance had very considerately promised to

intercede. Skepsey dropped a hint or two of his naughty proceedings drily, aware that their untutored

Nesta said: "Do you know, Skips, we saw a grand exhibition of fencing in Paris."

He sighed. "Ladies can look on at fencing! foils and masks! Captain Dartrey Fenellan has shown me, and

says, the French are our masters at it." He bowed constrainedly to mademoiselle.

His melancholy increased: "Much discouragement from Government, Society! If ladies . . . but I do not

venture. They are not against Games. But these are not a protection . . . to them, when needed; to the country.

The country seems asleep to its position. Mr. Durance has remarked on it:though I would not always quote

Mr. Durance . . . indeed, he says, that England has invested an Old Maid's All in the Millennium, and is

ruined if it delays to come. `Old maid,' I do not see. I do notif I may presume to speak of myself in the

same breath with so clever a gentleman, agree with Mr. Durance in everything. But the chestmeasurement

of recruits, the stature of the men enlisted, prove that we are losing the nursery of our soldiers."

"We are taking them out of the nursery, Skips, if you're for quoting Captain Dartrey," said Nesta. "We'll

A summons to his master's presence cut short something he was beginning to say about Captain Dartrey.

"What's this, of your name in the papers, your appearing before a magistrate, and a fine? Tell the tale

Skepsey fell upon his attitude for dialectical defence: the modest form of the two hands at rolling play and the

head deferentially sidecast. But knowing that he had gratified his personal tastes in the act of serving his

master's interests, an interfusion of sentiments plunged him into selfconsciousness; an unwonted state with

"First, sir, I would beg you to pardon the printing of your name beside mine . . ."

"Only to say, necessitated by the circumstances of the case. I read, that there was laughter in the court at my

exculpation of my conductas I have to call it; and there may have been. I may have expressed myself. . . . I

"So, it seems, you said to the magistrate. Do you tell me, that the cause of your gross breach of the law, was a

"The factsI must have begun badly, sir." Skepsey rattled the dry facts in his head to right them. From his

not having begun well, they had become dry as things underfoot. It was an error to have led off with the

sentiments. "Two very, two very respectable personsrespectablewere desirous to witness a short display

"Don't be nervous. To the point; you went into a field five miles out of London, in broad day, and stood in a

"With the gloves: and not for money, sir: for the trial of skill; not very many people. I cannot quite see the

"So you told the magistrate. You were fined for your inability to quite see. And you had to give security."

"Mr. Durance was kindly responsible for me, sir: an acquaintance of the magistrate."

"This boxing of yours is a positive mania, Skepsey. You must try to get the better of itmust! And my name

too! I'm to be proclaimed, as having in my service an inveterate pugilistwho breaks the law from

patriotism! Male or female, these very respectable personsthe people your show was meant for?"

"Take the opinion of the respectable ones for your standard of behaviour in future."

"It was a mere trial of skill, sir, to prove to one of the spectators, that I could be as good as my word. I

wished, I may say, to conciliate him, partly. He would nothe judged by size credit me with . . . he

backed my adversary Jerry Scrooma sturdy boxer, without the knowledge of the first principles."

"I think I taught the man that I could instruct, sir; he was complimentary before we parted. He thought I could

"Why not have had your pugilistic display in a publican's room in town, where you could have

"That would have been preferable, from the point of view of safety from intrusion, I can admitspeaking

humbly. But one of the partiesI had a wish to gratify himis a lover of old English times and habits and

our country scenes. He wanted it to take place on green grass. We drove over Hampstead in three carts and a

gig, as a company of pleasureas it was. A very beautiful morning. There was a rest at a publichouse. Mr.

Shaplow traces the misfortune to that. Mr. Jarniman, I hear, thinks it what he calls a traitor in the camp. I saw

"Mr. Jarniman is, I am to understand from the acquaintance introducing usa Mr. Shaplow I met in the train

from Lakelands one day, and again at the corner of a street near Drury Lane, a ham and beef shop kept by a

Mrs. Jarniman, a very stout lady, who does the chief carving in the shop, and is the mother of Mr. Jarniman:

he is in a confidential place, highly trusted." Skepsey looked up from the hands he soaped: "He is a curious

mixture; he has true enthusiasm for boxing, he believes in ghosts. He mourns for the lost days of

prizefighting, he thinks that spectres are on the increase. He has a very large appetite, depressed spirits. Mr.

Shaplow informs me he is a man of substance, in the service of a wealthy lady in poor health, expecting a

legacy and her appearance to him. He has the look Mr. Shaplow assures me he does not drink to excess: he

"Mr. Jarniman spoke of his expectations as being immediate: he put it, that he expected her spirit to be out for

him to meet it any dayor night. He desires it. He says, she has promised iton oath, he says, and must feel

that she must do her duty to him before she goes, if she is to appear to him with any countenance after. But he

is anxious for her in any case to show herself, and says, he should not have the heart to reproach her. He has

principles, a tear for suffering; he likes to be made to cry. Mrs. Jarniman, his mother, he is not married, is

much the same so far, except ghosts; she will not have them; except after strong tea, they come, she says,

come to her bed. She is foolish enough to sleep in a closecurtained bed. But the poor lady is so exceedingly

Victor stamped his foot. "This man Jarniman serves a lady now in aserious, does he say? Was he precise?"

"Mr. Jarniman spoke of a remarkable number of diseases; very complicated, he says. He has no opinion of

doctors. He says, that the lady's doctor and the chemistshe sits in a chemist's shop and swallows other

people's prescriptions that take her fancy. He says, her continuing to live is wonderful. He has no reason to

Skepsey's limpid grey eyed confirmed the negative to Victor, who was assured that the little man stood clean

"You are not on equal terms. You and the magistrate have helped him to know who it is you serve, Skepsey."

"Another time. Now go and ease your feet with a run over the town. We have music in half an hour. That you

Victor checked him: it was to ask whether this Jarniman had specified one, any one of the numerous diseases

Now Jarniman had shocked Skepsey with his blunt titles for a couple of the foremost maladies assailing the

poor lady's decayed constitution: not to be mentioned, Skepsey thought, in relation to ladies; whose organs

and functions we, who pay them a proper homage by restricting them to the sphere so worthily occupied by

their mothers up to the very oldest date, respectfully curtain; their accepted masters are chivalrous to them,

deploring their need at times for the doctors and drugs. He stood looking most unhappy. "She was to appear,

The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to relish it) was at night in the towns,

when the sound of instrumental and vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they

heard zon, zon, violon, fl�te et basse; not bad fluting, excellent fiddling, such singing as a maestro,

conducting his own Opera, would have approved. So Victor said of his darlings' voices. Nesta's and her

mother's were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby's trompe in union, sufficiently confirmed the popular

impression, that they were artistes. They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions

of gratitude. at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors had entreated them to stay another

night, to give an entertainment. Victor took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet English

family, simply keepingup the habits they practised in Old England: all were welcome to hear them while

The pride of the pleasure of reversing the general idea of English dulness among our neighbours, was

perceived to have laid fast hold of Dudley Sowerby at Dreux. He was at the window from time to time,

counting heads below. For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to supplant the flute duet with the soprano

and contralto of the Helena section of the Mefistofele, called the Serenade: La Luna immobile. She consulted

her mother, and they sang it. The crowds below, swollen to a block of the street, were dead still, showing the

instinctive good manners of the people. Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Proven�al or Cevennes

air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but it suited her mezzosoprano tones; and it rang massively of the

martialreligious. To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not a Huguenot France have marched! Dudley

Sowerby, heedlessly, under an emotion that could be stirred in him with force, by the soul of religion issuing

through music, addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley. She did not shrug or snub him, but rejoined:

"I could go to battle with that song in the ears." She liked seeing him so happily transformed; and liked the

effect of it on Nesta when his face shone in talking. He was at home with the girl's eyes, as he had never

been. A song expressing in one the combative and devotional, went to the springs of his blood; for he was of

an old warrior race, beneath the thick crust of imposed peaceful maxims and commercial pursuits and

habitual stiff correctness. As much as wine, will music bring out the native bent of the civilized man: endow

him with language too. He was as if unlocked; he met Nesta's eyes and ran in a voluble interchange, that gave

him flattering afterthoughts, and at the moment sensibly a new and assured, or to some extent assured, station

beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady would be helped to perceive his unvoiced solider gifts.

Nataly observed them, thinking of Victor's mastering subtlety. She had hoped (having clearly seen the sheep's

eye in the shepherd) that Mr. Barmby would be watchful to act as a block between them; and therefore she

had stipulated for his presence on the journey. She remembered Victor's rapid look of readiness to

consent:he reckoned how naturally Mr. Barmby would serve as a foil to any younger man. Mr. Barmby

had tried all along to perform his part: he had always been thwarted; notably once at Gisors, where by some

cunning management he and mademoiselle found themselves in the cell of the prisoner's Nailwrought work

while Nesta had to take Sowerby's hand for help at a passage here and there along the narrow outer

castlewalls. And Mr. Barmby, upon occasions, had set that dimple in Nesta's cheek quivering, though

Simeon Fenellan was not at hand, and there was no telling how it was done, beyond the evidence that Victor

From the day of the announcement of Lakelands, she had been brought more into contact with his genius of

dexterity and foresight than ever previously: she had bent to the burden of it more; had seen herself and

everybody else outstrippedherself, of course; she did not count in a struggle with him. But since that red

dawn of Lakelands, it was almost as if he had descended to earth from the skies. She now saw his mortality in

the miraculous things he did. The reason of it was, that through the perceptible various arts and shifts on her

level, an opposing spirit had plainer view of his aim, to judge it. She thought it a mean one.

The power it had to hurry her with the strength of a torrent to an end she dreaded, impressed her physically;

so far subduing her mind, in consequence, as to keep the idea of absolute resistance obscure, though her

bosom heaved with the breath; but what was her own of a mind hung hovering above him, criticizing; and

involuntarily, discomfortingly. She could have prayed to be led blindly or blindly dashed on: she could trust

him for success; and her critical mind seemed at times a treachery. Still she was compelled to judge.

When he said to her at night, pressing both her hands: "This is the news of the day, my love! It's death at last.

We shall soon be thanking heaven for freedom;" her fingers writhed upon his and gripped them in a torture of

remorse on his behalf. A shattering throb of her heart gave her sight of herself as well. For so it is with the

woman who loves in subjection, she may be a critic of the man, she is his accomplice.

He told her the tale of Skepsey and Jarniman, colouring it, as any interested animated conduit necessarily

It might not be today or next week or month: but so much testimony pointed to a day within the horizon,

She bowed her head to heaven for forgiveness. The murderous hope stood up, stood out in forms and

pictures. There was one of a woman at her ease at last in the reception of guests; contrasting with an ironic

haunting figure of the woman of queenly air and stature under a finger of scorn for a boldfaced impostor.

Nataly's lips twitched at the remembrance of quaint whimpers of complaint to the Fates, for directing that a

large instead of a rather diminutive woman should be the social offender fearing exposure. Majesty in the

criminal's dock, is a confounding spectacle. To the bosom of the majestic creature, all her glorious attributes

have become the executioner's implements. She must for her soul's health believe that a day of release and

"Barmby!if my dear girl would like him best," Victor said, in tenderest undertones, observing the

shadowing variations of her face; and pierced her cruelly, past explanation or understanding;not that she

We cry to women; Land, ho!a land of palms after storms at sea; and at once they inundate us with a deluge

"Half a minute, dear Victor, not longer," Nataly said, weeping, near on laughing over his look of wanton

abandonment to despair at sight of her tears. "Don't mind me. I am rather like Fenellan's laundress, the tearful

woman whose professional apparatus was her soft heart and a cake of soap. Skepsey has made his peace with

Victor answered: "Yes, yes; I see what he has been about. We're a mixed lot, all of usthe best! You've

noticed, Skepsey has no laugh: however absurd the thing he tells you, not a smile!"

"But you trust his eyes; you look fathoms into them. Captain Dartrey thinks him one of the men most in

"So Nataly of course thinks the same. And he's a worthy little velocipede, as Fenellan calls him. One wishes

Colney had been with us. Only Colney!pity one can't cut his talons for the space before they grow again."

Ay, and in the presence of Colney Durance, Victor would not have been so encouraging, half boyishly

caressing, with Dudley Sowerby! It was the very manner to sow seed of imitativeness in the girl, devoted as

she was to her father. Nataly sighed, foreseeing evil, owning it a superstition, feeling it a certainty. We are

easily prophets, sure of being justified, when the cleverness of schemes devoted to material ends appears

most delicately perfect. History, the tales of households, the tombstone, are with us to inspire. In Nataly's

bosom, the reproof of her inefficiency for offering counsel where Victor for his soul's sake needed it, was

beginning to thunder at whiles as a reproach of unfittingness in his mate, worse than a public denunciation of

It might be decreed that she and Society were to come to reconcilement. A pain previously thought of, never

previously so realized, seized her at her next sight of Nesta. She had not taken in her front mind the contrast

of the innocent one condemned to endure the shadow from which the guilty was by a transient ceremony

released. Nature could at a push be eloquent to defend the guilty. Not a word of vindicating eloquence rose up

to clear the innocent. Nothing that she could do; no devotedness, not any sacrifice, and no treaty of peace, no

possible joy to come, nothing could remove the shadow from her child. She dreamed of the succour in

eloquence, to charm the ears of chosen juries while a fact spoke over the population, with a relentless rolling

out of its one hard word. But eloquence, powerful on her behalf, was dumb when referred to Nesta. It seemed

a cruel mystery. How was it permitted by the Merciful Disposer! . . . Nataly's intellect and her reverence

clashed. They clash to the end of time if we persist in regarding the Spirit of Life as a remote Externe, who

plays the human figures, to bring about this or that issue, instead of being beside, us, within us, our breath, if

we will; marking on us where at each step we sink to the animal, mount to the divine, we and ours who

follow, offspring of body or mind. She was in her error, from judging of the destiny of man by the fate of

individuals. Chiefly her error was, to try to be thinking at all amid the fevered tangle of her sensations.

A darkness fell upon the troubled woman, and was thicker overhead when her warm blood had drawn her to

some acceptance of the philosophy of existence, in a savour of gratification at the prospect of her equal

footing with the world while yet she lived. She hated herself for taking pleasure in anything to be bestowed

by a world so haphazard, illbalanced, unjust; she took it bitterly, with such naturalness as not to be aware

that it was irony and a poisonous irony moving her to welcome the restorative ceremony because her

THAT Mausoleum at Dreux may touch to lift us. History pleads for the pride of the great discrowned Family

giving her illumination there. The pride is reverently postured; the princely mourningcloak it wears

becomingly braided at the hem with fair designs of our mortal humility in the presence of the vanquisher;

against whom, acknowledging a visible conquest of the dust, it sustains a placid contention in coloured glass

Mademoiselle de Seilles, a fervid Orleanist, was thanked for having advised the curvature of the route

homeward to visit "the spot of so impressive a monument:" as it was phrased by the Rev. Septimus Barmby;

whose exposition to Nesta of the beautiful stainedglass pictures of incidents in the life of the crusading St.

Louis, was toned to be likewise impressive: Colney Durance not being at hand to bewail the pathos of his

exhaustless "whacking of the platitudes;" which still retain their tender parts, but cry unheard when there is

Professional devoutness is deemed more righteous on such occasions than poetic fire. It robes us in the cloak

of the place, as at a funeral. Generally, Mr. Barmby found, and justly, that it is in superior estimation among

his countrymen of all classes. They are shown by example how to look, think, speak; what to do. Poets are

disturbing; they cannot be comfortably imitated, they are unsafe, not certainly the metal, unless you have

Laureates, entitled to speak by their pay and decorations; and these are but one at a time, a dweller in books,

good for quoting at bestand a quotation may remind us .of a parody, to convulse the sacred dome!

Established plain prose officials do better for our English. The audience moved round with heads of

Victor called to recollection Fenellan's "Rev. Glendoveer" while Mr. Barmby pursued his discourse,

uninterrupted by tripping wags. And those who have schemes, as well as those who are startled by the

criticism in laughter to discover, that they have cause for shunning it, rejoice when wits are absent. Mr.

Sowerby and Nesta interchanged a comment on Mr. Barmby's remarks: The Fate of Princes! The Paths of

Glory! St. Louis was a very distant Roman Catholic monarch; and the young gentleman of Evangelical

education could admire him as a Crusader. St. Louis was for Nesta a figure in the rich hues of royal Saintship

softened to homeliness by tears. She doated on a royalty crowned with the Saint's halo, that swam down to us

to lift us through holy human showers. She listened to Mr. Barmby, hearing few sentences, lending his

eloquence all she felt: he rolled forth notes of a minster organ, accordant with the devotional service she was

holding mutely. Mademoiselle upon St. Louis: "Worthy to be named King of Kings!" swept her to a fount of

thoughts, where the thoughts are not yet shaped, are yet in the breast of the mother emotions. Louise de

Seilles had prepared her to be strangely and deeply moved. The girl had a heart of many strings, of high pitch,

open to be musical to simplest wandering airs or to the gales. This crypt of the recumbent sculptured figures

and the coloured series of acts in the passage of the crowned Saint thrilled her as with sight of flame on an

altarpiece of History. But this King in the lines of the Crucifixion leading, gave her a lemon of life, not a

message from death. With such a King, there would be union of the old order and the new, cessation to

political turmoil: Radicalism, Socialism, all the monster names of things with heads agape in these our days

to gobbleup the venerable, obliterate the beautiful, leave a stoniness of floods where field and garden were,

would be appeased, transfigured. She hoped, she prayed for that glorious leader's advent.

On one subject, conceived by her only of late, and not intelligibly, not communicably: a subject thickly

veiled; one which struck at her through her sex and must, she thought, ever be unnamed (the ardent young

creature saw it as a very thing torn by the winds to show hideous gleams of a body raging with fire behind the

veil): on this one subject, her hopes and prayers were dumb in her bosom. It signified shame. She knew not

the how, for she had no power to contemplate it: there was a torment of earth and a writhing of lurid

dustclouds about it at a glimpse. But if the new crusading Hero were to come attacking thatif some born

prince nobly man would head the world to take away the withering scarlet from the face of women, she felt

she could kiss the print of his feet upon the ground. Meanwhile she had enjoyment of her plunge into the

inmost forestwell of medi�val imaginativeness, where youthful minds of good aspiration through their

She had an eye for little Skepsey too: unaware that these French Princes had hurried him off to Agincourt, for

another encounter with them and the old resultpoor dear gentlemen, with whom we do so wish to be

friendly! What amused her was, his evident fatigue in undergoing the slow parade, and sheer deference to his

betters, as to the signification of a holiday on arrested legs. Dudley Sowerby's attention to him, in elucidating

the scenes with historical scraps, greatly pleased her. The Rev. Septimus of course occupied her chiefly.

Mademoiselle was always near, to receive his repeated expressions of gratitude for the route she had

counselled. Without personal objections to a wellmeaning orderly man, whose pardonable error it was to be

aiming too considerably higher than his head, she did but show him the voluble muteness of a

Frenchwoman's closed lips; not a smile at all, and certainly no sign of hostility; when bowing to his reiterated

compliment in the sentence of French. Mr. Barmby had noticed (and a strong sentiment rendered him

observant, unwontedly) a similar alert immobility of her lips, indicating foreign notions of this kind or that, in

England: an all but imperceptible shortening or loss of corners at the mouth, upon mention of marriages of

his clergy: particularly once, at his reading of a lengthy report in a newspaper of a Wedding Ceremony

involving his favourite Bishop for bridegroom: a report to make one glow like Hymen rollicking the Torch

after draining the bumper to the flying slipper. He remembered the look, and how it seemed to intensify on

the slumbering features, at a statement, that his Bishop was a widower, entering into nuptials in his

fiftyfourth year. Why not? But we ask it of Heaven and Man, why not? Mademoiselle was pleasant: she was

young or youngish; her own clergy were celibates, and no, he could not argue the matter with a young or

youngish person of her sex. Could it be a reasonable womana woman! who disapproved the holy

nuptials of the pastors of the flocks? But we are forbidden to imagine the conducting of an argument thereon

with a lady:Luther . . . but we are not in Luther's time:Nature . . . no, nor can there possibly be allusions

to Nature. Mr. Barmby wondered at Protestant parents taking a Papistical governess for their young flower of

English womanhood. However, she venerated St. Louis; he cordially also; there they met; and he admitted,

that she had, for a Frenchwoman, a handsome face, and besides an agreeably artificial ingenuousness in the

The spell upon Nesta was not blown away on English ground; and when her father and mother were

comparing their impressions, she could not but keep guard over the deeper among her own. At the Ch�teau de

Gisors, leftward off Vernon on Seine, it had been one of romance and wonderment, with inquisitive historic

soundings of her knowledge and mademoiselle's, a reverence for the prisoner's patient holy work, and

picturings of his watchful waiting daily, Nail in hand, for the heavensent sunlight on the circular

dungeonwall through the slits of the meurtri�res. But the Mausoleum at Dreux spake religiously; it enfolded

Mr. Barmby, his voice re edified it. The fact that he had discoursed there, though not a word of the

discourse was remembered, allied him to the spirit of a day rather increasing in sacredness as it receded and

Mademoiselle had to say to herself: "Impossible!" after seeing the drift of her dear Nesta's eyes in the wake of

the colossal English clergyman. She fed her incredulousness indignantly on the evidence confounding it.

Nataly was aware of unusual intonations, treblestressed, in the Bethesda and the Galilee of Mr. Barmby on

Concert evenings: as it were, the towering woodwork of the cathedral organ in quake under emission of its

multitudinous outroar. The "Which?" of the Rev. Septimus, addressed to Nesta, when song was demanded of

him; and her "Either;" and his gentle hesitation, upon a gaze at her for the directing choice, could not be

Did he know a certain thing?and dream of urging the suit, as an indulgent skipper of parental pages?

Such haunting interrogations were the conspirator's daggers out at any instant, or leaping in sheath, against

Nataly's peace of mind. But she trusted her girl's laughing side to rectify any little sentimental

overbalancing. She left the ground where maternal meditations are serious, at an image of Mr. Barmby

A feminine look was trailed across the eyes of mademoiselle, with mention of Mr. Barmby's name.

Mademoiselle rippled her shoulders. "We are at present much enamoured of Bethesda."

That watchfullest showing no alarm, the absurdity of the suspicion smothered it.

Nataly had moreover to receive startling new guests: Lady Rodwell Blachington; Mrs. Fanning, wife of the

General: young Mrs. Blathenoy, wife of the great billbroker: ladies of Wrensham and about. And it was a

tasking of her energies equal to the buffetting of recurrent waves on deep sea. The ladies were eager for her

entry into Lakelands. She heard that Victor had appointed Lady Blachington's third son to the coveted post of

clerk in the Indian house of Inchling and Radnor. These are the deluge days when even aristocracy will cry

blessings on the man who procures a commercial appointment for one of its younger sons offended and

rebutted by the barrier of Examinations for the Civil Service. "To have our Adolphus under Mr. Victor

Radnor's protection, is a step!" Lady Blachington said. Nataly was in an atmosphere of hints and revealings.

There were City Dinners, to which one or other of the residents about Lakelands had been taken before he sat

at Victor's London table. He was already winning his way, apparently without effort, to be the popular man of

that neighbourhood. A subterranean tide or a slipping of earth itself seemed bearing her on. She had his

promise indeed, that he would not ask of her to enter Lakelands until the day of his freedom had risen; but

though she could trust to his word, the heart of the word went out of it when she heard herself thanked by

Lady Blachington (who could so well excuse her at such a time of occupation for not returning her call, that

she called in a friendly way a second time, warmly to thank her) for throwing open the Concert room at

Lakelands in August, to an Entertainment in assistance of the funds for the purpose of erecting an East of

London Clubhouse, where the children of the poor by day could play, and their parents pass a disengaged

evening. Doubtless a worthy Charity. Nataly was alive to the duties of wealth. Had it been simply a demand

for a donation, she would not have shown that momentary pucker of the brows, which Lady Blachington read

Nataly read a leaf of her fate in this announcement. Nay, she beheld herself as the outer world vexedly

beholds a creature swung along to the doing of things against the better mind. An outer world is thoughtless

of situations which prepare us to meet the objectionable with a will benumbed;if we do not, as does that

outer world, belong to the party of the readily heroical. She scourged her weakness: and the intimation of the

truth stood over her, more than ever manifest, that the deficiency affecting her character lay in her want of

language. A tongue to speak and contend, would have helped her to carve a clearer way. But then again, the

tongue to speak must be one which could reproach, and strike at errors; fence, and continually summon

resources to engage the electrical vitality of a man like Victor. It was an exultation of their life together, a

mark of its holiness for them both, that they had never breathed a reproach upon one another. She dropped

away from ideas of remonstrance; faintly seeing, in her sigh of submission, that the deficiency affecting her

character would have been supplied by a greater force of character, pressing either to speech or acts. The

confession of a fated inevitable in the mind, is weakness prostrate. She knew it: but she could point to the

Mr. Barmby, she thought, deserved her gratitude in some degree for stepping between Mr. Sowerby and

Nesta. The girl not having inclinations, and the young gentleman being devoid of stratagem, they were easily

Mademoiselle would have said, that the shepherd also had rarely if ever a minute quite alone with her lamb.

Incredulously she perceived signs of a shock. The secret following the signs was betrayed by Nesta in return

for a tender grasp of hands and a droll flutter of eyelids. Out it came, on a nod first; then a dreary mention of

a date, and an incident, to bring it nearer to comprehension. Mr. Barmbyand decide who will whether it is

that Love was made to elude or that curates impelled by his fires are subtle as �therhad outwitted French

watchfulness by stealing minutes enough on a day at Lakelands to declare himself. And no wonder the girl

looked so forlorn: he had shivered her medi�val forestpalace of illuminated glass, to leave her standing like

a mountain hind, that sniffs the tainted gale off the crag of her first quick leap from hounds; her instincts

She had no memory for his words; so, and truly, she told her Louise: meaning that she had only a spiceless

There had been a dream of it; with the lifeawakening marvel it would be, the humbleness it would bring to

her soul beneath the golden clothing of her body: one of those faint formless dreams, which are as the bend of

grasses to the breath of a still twilight. She lived too spiritedly to hang on any dream; and had moreover a

muffled dreadshadowsister to the virginal desireof this one, as of a fateful power that might drag her

down, disorder, discolour. But now she had heard it: the word, the very word itself! in her own ears!

addressed to her! in a man's voice! The first utterance had been heard, and it was over; the chapter of the

book of bulky promise of the splendours and mysteries;the shimmering woods and bushy glades, and the

descent of the shape celestial, and the recognitionthe mutual cry of affinity; and overhead the crimson

outrolling of the flag of beneficent enterprises hand in hand, all was at an end. These, then, are the deceptions

our elders tell of! That masculine voice should herald a new world to the maiden. The voice she had heard did

Mademoiselle prudently forbore from satirical remarks on his person or on his conduct. Nesta had nothing to

"Can I have been guilty of leading him to think? . . ." she said, in a tone that writhed, at a second discussion

"They choose to think," mademoiselle replied. "It is he or another. My dear and dearest, you have entered the

field where shots fly thick, as they do to soldiers in battle; and it is neither your fault nor any one's, if you are

Mademoiselle immediately answered the tone of entreaty. "Has it happened to me? I am of the age of eight

and twenty; passable, to look at: yes, my dear, I have gone through it. To spare you the questions tormenting

you, I will tell you, that perhaps our experience of our feelings comes nigh on a kind of resemblance. The

first gentleman who did me the honour to inform me of his passion, was a hunchback."

Nesta cried "Oh!" in a veritable pang of sympathy, and clapped hands to her ears, to shut out Mr. Barmby's

Her disillusionment became of the sort which hears derision. A girl of quick blood and active though

unregulated intellect, she caught at the comic of young women's hopes and experiences, in her fear of it.

"My own precious poor dear Louise! what injustice there is in the world for one like my Louise to have a

Nesta controlled a shuddering: "It is the knowledge of it in ourselvesthat it has ever happened;you dear

Louise, who deserve so much better! And one asksOh, why are we not left in peace! And do look at the

objects it makes of us!" Mademoiselle could see, that the girl's desperation had got hold of her humour for a

lifebuoy. "It is really worse to have it unknownwhen you are compelled to be his partner in sharing the

secret, and feel as if it were a dreadful doll you conceal for fear that everybody will laugh at its face."

She resumed her seriousness: "I find it so hard to be vexed with him and really really like him. For he is a

good man; but he will not let one shake him off. He distresses: because we can't quite meet as we did. Last

"Moths have to pass through showers, and keep their pretty patterns from damage as best they can," said

Nesta transformed herself into a disciple of Philosophy on the spot. "Yes, all these feelings of ours are

mothdust! One feels them. I suppose they pass. They must. But tell me, Louise, dear soul, was your poor

"Conformably with the regulations prescribed to young damsels who are in request to surrender the custody

of their hands. It is easy to commit a dangerous excess in the dispensing of that article they call pity of them."

At this ingenuous question, woefully uttered, mademoiselle was pricked to smile pointedly. Nesta had a tooth

on her underlip. Then, shaking vapours to the winds, she said: "It is an honour, to be asked; and we cannot be

expected to consent. So I shall wear through it.Only I do wish that Mr. Fenellan would not call him The

Mr. Barmby was absent for two weeks. "Can any thing have offended him?" Victor inquired, in some

consternation, appreciating the man's worth, and the grand basso he was; together with the need for him at the

Nataly wrote Mr. Barmby a direct invitation. She had no reply. Her speculations were cut short by Victor,

who handed her a brief note addressed to him and signed by the Rev. Septimus, petitioning for a private

The formality of the request incensed Victor. "Now, dear love, you see Colney's meaning, when he says,

there are people who have no intimacy in them. Here's a man who visits me regularly once a week or more,

has been familiar for years four, at least; and he wants to speak to me, and must obtain the `privilege' by

"You will hear tomorrow afternoon," Nataly said, seeing one paved way to the meaninga too likely

"Impossible! Barmby has good sense; Bottesini can't intend to come scraping on that string. But we won't

lose him; he's one of us. Barmby counts for more at a Charity Concert than all the catalogue, and particularly

Victor despatched a cheerful curt consent to see Mr. Barmby privately on the late afternoon of the day to

Nesta, returning home from the park at that hour of the interview, ignorant of Mr. Barmby's purpose though

she was, had her fires extinguished by the rolling roar of curfew along the hallpassage, out of the library.

WHEN, upon the wellknown quest, the delightful singer Orpheus took that downward way, coming in sight

of old Cerberus centiceps, he astutely feigned inattention to the hostile appearances of the multiple beast, and

with a wave of his plectrum over the responsive lyre, he at the stroke raised voice. This much you know. It

may be communicated to you, that there was then beheld the most singular spectacle ever exhibited on the

dizzy line of division between the living and the dead. For those unaccustomed musical tones in the last thin

whiff of our sustaining air were so smartingly persuasive as to pierce to the vitals of the faithful Old Dog

before his offended sentiments had leisure to rouse their heads against a beggar of a mortal. The terrible

sugariness which poured into him worked like venom to cause an encounter and a wrestling: his battery of

jaws expressed it. They gaped. At the same time, his eyeballs gave up. All the Dog, that would have barked

the breathing intruder an hundredfold back to earth, was one compulsory centurion yawn. Tears, issue of the

frightful internal wedding of the dulcet and the sour (a ravishing rather of the latter by the former), rolled off

Now, if you are not for insisting that a magnificent simile shall be composed of exactly the like notes in

another octave, you will catch the fine flavour of analogy and be wafted in a beat of wings across the scene of

the application of the Rev. Septimus Barmby to Mr. Victor Radnor, that he might enter the house in the guise

of suitor for the hand of Nesta Victoria. It is the excelling merit of similes and metaphors to spring us to vault

over gaps and thickets and dreary places. But, as with the visits of Immortals, we must be ready to receive

them. Beware, moreover, of examining them too scrupulously: they have a trick of wearing to vapour if

So far the comparison is absolute, that Mr. Barmby passed: he was at liberty to pursue his quest.

Victor could not explain how he had been brought to grant it. He was at pains to conceal the bewilderment

Mr. Barmby had cast on him, and make Nataly see the smallness of the grant: both of them were unwilling

to lose Barmby; there was not the slightest fear about Fredi, he said; and why should not poor Barmby have

his chance with the others in the race!and his Nataly knew that he hated to speak unkindly: he could cry

the negative like a crack of thunder in the City. But such matters as these! and a man pleading merely for the

right to see the girl!and pleading in a tone . . . "I assure you, my love, he touched chords."

"His passionnothing else. Candid enough. And he had a tone he has a tone, you know. It's not what he

said. Some allusion to belief in a favourable opinion of him . . . encouragement . . . on the part of the mama.

She had thought in her heartnot seriously; on a sigh of despondencythat Mr. Barmby espousing the girl

would smoothe a troubled prospect: and a present resentment at her weakness rendered her shrewd to detect

Victor's cunning to cover his own: a thing imaginable of him previously in sentimental matters, yet never

accurately and so legibly printed on her mind. It did not draw her to read him with a novel familiarity; it drew

her to be more sensible of foregone intimations of the man he wasirresistible in attack, not impregnably

defensive. Nor did he seem in this instance humanely considerate: if mademoiselle's estimate of the mind of

the girl was not wrong, then Mr. Barmby's position would be both a ridiculous and a cruel one. She had some

silly final idea that the poor man might now serve permanently to check the more dreaded applicant: a proof

Nataly acknowledged, after rallying Victor for coming to have his weakness condoned, a justice in his

counteraccusation, of a loss of her natural cheerfulness, and promised amendment, with a steely smile, that

his lips mimicked fondly; and her smile softened. To strengthen the dear soul's hopes, he spoke, as one who

had received the latest information, of Dr. Themison and surgeons;little conscious of the tragic depths he

struck or of the burden he gave her heart to bear. Her look alarmed him. She seemed to be hugging herself up

to the tingling scalp, and was in a moment marble to sight and touch. She looked like the old engravings of

He held her embraced, feeling her body as if it were in the awful grip of fingers from the outside of life.

The seizure was over before it could be called ominous. When it was once over, and she had smiled again and

rebuked him for excessive anxiety, his apprehensions no longer troubled him, but subsided sensationally in

wrath at the crippled woman who would not obey the dictate of her ailments instantly to perish and spare this

Subsequently, later than usual, he performed his usual mental penance for it. In consequence, the wrath, and

the wish, and the penitence, haunted him, each swelling to possession of him in turn; until they united to head

a plunge into retrospects; which led to his reviewing the army of charges against Mrs. Burman.

And of this he grew ashamed, attributing it to the morbid indulgence in reflection: a disease never afflicting

him anterior to the stupid fall on London Bridge. He rubbed instinctively for the punctiliobump, and could

cheat his fancy to think a remainder of it there, just below, half an inch to the right of, the spot where a

phrenologist, invited by Nataly in old days, had marked philoprogenitiveness on his capacious and enviable

cerebrum. He knew well it was a fancy. But it was a fact also, that since the day of the fall (never, save in

merest glimpses, before that day), he had taken to look behind him, as though an eye had been knocked in the

Then, was that day of the announcement of Lakelands to Nataly, to be accounted a gloomy day? He would

She was happily occupied with her purchases of furniture, Fredi with her singing lessons, and he with his

business; a grasp of many ribands, reiningin or letting loose; always enjoyable in the act. Recently only had

he known when at home, a relaxation, a positive pleasure in looking forward to the hours of the City office.

This was odd, but so it was; and looking homeward from the City, he had a sense of disappointment when it

was not Concert evening. The Cormyns, the Yatts, and Priscilla Graves, and Pempton, foolish fellow, and

that bothering Barmby, and Peridon and Catkin, were the lining of his nest. Well, and so they had been before

Lakelands rose. What had induced! . . . he suddenly felt foreign to himself. The shrouded figure of his lost

A peep into the folds of the shroud was granted him:Is it a truth, that if we are great owners of money, we

are so swollen with a force not native to us, as to be precipitated into acts the downright contrary of our

He inquired it of his tastes, which have the bad habit of unmeasured phrasing when they are displeased, and

so they yield no rational answer. Still he gave heed to violent extraneous harpings against money. Epigrams

of Colney's; abuse of it and the owners of it by Socialist orators reported in some newspaper corner; had him

They ceased in the presence of Lady Grace Halley, who entered his office to tell him she was leaving town

for Whinfold, her husband's familyseat, where the dear man lay in evil case. She signified her resignation to

"I look troubled?" Victor said laughing, and bethought him of what the trouble might be. "City news would

not cause the look. Ah, yes:I was talking in the street to a friend of mine on horseback the other day, and

he kept noticing his horse's queer starts. We spied half a dozen children in the gutter, at the tail of the horse,

one of them plucking at a hair. `Please, sir, may I have a hair out of your horse's tail?' said the mite. We

patted the poor horse that grew a tail for urchins to pluck at. Men come to the fathers about their girls. It's my

belief that mothers more easily say no. If they learn the word as maids, you'll say! However, there's no fear

"Clearly, you sell; always jump out of a mounted mine, unless you're at the bottom of it."

"There are Cityarticles against the mine this morningor I should have been on my way to Whinfold at this

"The merry boys are at work to bring your balloon to the ground, that you may quit it for them to ascend.

Tiddler has enemies, like the best of mines: or they may be named lovers, if you like. And mines that have

gone up, go down for a while before they rise again; it's an affair of undulations; rocket mines are not so

healthy. The stories are false, for the time. I had the latest from Dartrey Fenellan yesterday. He's here next

Now she saw. She understood the portent of Mr. Barmby's hovering offer of the choice of songs, and the

But she had come about her own business; and after remarking, that when there is a prize there must be

competition, or England will have to lower her flag, she declared her resolve to stick to Tiddler, exclaiming:

She put out her hand to be taken. "Not if you back me here. It really is not gambling when yours is the

counsel I follow. And if I'm to be a widow, I shall have to lean on a friend, gifted like you. I love adventure,

danger;well, if we two are in it; just to see my captain in a storm. And if the worst happens, we go down

together. It's the detestation of our deadly humdrum of modern life; some inherited love of fighting."

"Colney may call it what he pleases. If I read fiction, let it be fiction; airier than hard fact. If I see a ballet, my

troop of short skirts must not go stepping like pavement policemen. I can't read dull analytical stuff or

`stylists' when I want actionif I'm to give my mind to a story. I can supply the reflections. I'm Englishif

Colney's right in saying we always come round to the story with the streak of supernaturalism. I don't ask for

"But Mr. Durance is right, we require a shedding; I confess I expect it where there's love; it's part of the

balance, and justifies one's excitement. How otherwise do you get any real crisis? I must read and live

"There's the Adam life and the Macadam life, Fenellan says. Pass it in books, but in life we can have quite

enough excitement coming out of our thoughts. No brandy there! And no fine name for personal predilections

or things done in domino!" Victor said, with his very pleasant face, pressing her hand, to keep the act of long

holding it in countenance and bring it to a wellpunctuated conclusion: thinking involuntarily of the other fair

woman, whose hand was his, and who betrayed a beaten visage despiteor with that poor kind of trust in

her captain. But the thought was not guilty of drawing comparisons. "This is one that I could trust, as captain

"You judge entirely by the surface if you take me for a shifty person at the trial," said Lady Grace.

Skepsey entered the room with one of his packets, and she was reminded of trains and husbands.

She left Victor uncomfortably ruffled: and how? for she had none of the physical charms appealing peculiarly

to the man who was taken with grandeur of shape. She belonged rather to the description physically

It is a critical comment on a civilization carelessly distilled from the jealous East, when visits of fair women

to City offices can have this effect. If the sexes are separated for an hour, the place where one is excluded or

not common to see, becomes inflammable to that appearing spark. He does outrage to a bona Dea: she to the

monasticism of the Court of Law: and he and she awaken unhallowed emotions. Supposing, however, that

western men were to deorientalize their gleeful notions of her, and disTurk themselves by inviting the

woman's voluble tongue to sisterly occupation there in the midst of the pleading Court, as in the domestic

circle: very soon would her eyes be harmless:unless directed upon us with intent.

That is the burning core of the great Question, our Armageddon in Morality: Is she moral? Does she mean to

be harmless? Is she not untamable Old Nature? And when once on an equal footing with her lordly half,

would not the spangled beauty, in a turn, like the realistic transformationtrick of a pantomime, show herself

to be that wanton old thingthe empress of disorderliness? You have to recollect, as the Conservative

acutely suggests, that her timidities, at present urging her to support Establishments, pertain to her state of

dependence. The party views of Conservatism are, must be, founded, we should remember, on an intimate

acquaintance with her in the situations where she is almost unrestrictedly free and her laughter rings to

confirm the sentences of classical authors and Eastern sages. Conservatives know what they are about when

they refuse to fling the last lattice of an ancient harem open to air and sunthe brutal dispersers of mystery,

Victor's opinions were those of the entrenched majority; objecting to the occult power of women, as we have

the women now, while legislating to maintain them so; and forbidding a step to a desperately wicked female

world lest the step should be to wickeder. His opinions were in the background, rarely stirred; but the lady

had brought them forward; and he fretted at his restlessness, vexed that it should be due to the intrusion of the

sex instead of to the charms of the individual. No sting of the sort had bothered him, he called to mind, on

board the Channel boatnothing to speak of. "Why does she come here! Why didn't she go to her husband!

She gets into the City scramble blindfold, and catches at the nearest hand to help her out! Nice woman

enough." Yes, but he was annoyed with her for springing sensations that ran altogether heartless to the object,

at the same time that they were disloyal to the dear woman their natural divinity. And between him and that

dear woman, since the communication made by Skepsey in the town of Dreux, nightly the dividing spirit of

Mrs. Burman lay: cold as a corpse. They both felt her there. They kissed coldly, pressed a hand, said good

Next afternoon the announcement by Skepsey of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, surprised Victor's eyebrows at

Whether or not Colney Durance drew his description of a sunken nobility from the "sick falcon"

distinguishing the handsome features of Mr. Sowerby, that beaked invalid was particularly noticeable to

Victor during the statement of his case, although the young gentleman was far from being one, in Colney's

words, to enliven the condition of domestic fowl with an hereditary turn for "preying;" eminently the reverse;

he was of good moral repute, a worker, a commendable citizen. But there was the obligation upon him to

speakit is expected in such cases, if only as a formalityof his "love:" hard to do even in view and near to

the damsel's reddening cheeks: it perplexed him. He dropped a veil on the bashful topic; his tone was the

same as when he reverted to the material points; his present income, his position in the great Bank of Shotts

Co., his prospects, the health of the heir to the Cantor earldom. He considered that he spoke to a member of

the City merchants, whose preference for the plain positive, upon the question of an alliance between families

by marriage, lends them for once a resemblance to lords. When a person is not read by character, the position

Hard on poor Fredi! was Victor's thought behind the smile he bent on this bald Cupid. She deserved a more

poetical lover! His paternal sympathies for the girl besought in love, revived his past feelings as a wooer;

nothing but a dread of the influence of Mr. Barmby's toned eloquence upon the girl, after her listening to

Dudley Sowerby's addresses, checked his contempt for the latter. He could not despise the suitor he sided

with against another and seemingly now a more dangerous. Unable quite to repress the sentiment, he

proceeded immediately to put it to his uses. For we have no need to be scrupulously formal and precise in the

exposition of circumstances to a fellow who may thank the stars if such a girl condescends to give him a

hearing. He had this idea through the conception of his girl's generosity. And furthermore, the cognizant eye

of a Lucretian Alma Mater having seat so strongly in Victor, demanded as a right an effusion of the

promising amorous graces on the part of the acceptable applicant to the post of husband of that peerless.

These being absent, evidently nonexistent, it seemed sufficient for the present, after the fashion of the young

They were dotted along with a fine disregard of the stateliness of the sum to be settled on Nesta Victoria, and

with a distant but burning wish all the while, that the suitor had been one to touch his heart and open it,

inspiriting itas could have been doneto disclose for good and all the things utterable. Victor loved clear

honesty, as he loved light: and though he hated to be accused of not showing a clean face in the light, he

would have been moved and lifted to confess to a spot by the touch at his heart. Dudley Sowerby's

deficiencies, however, were outweighed by the palpable advantages of his birth, his prospects, and his good

repute for conduct; add thereto his gentlemanly manners. Victor sighed again over his poor Fredi; and in

telling Mr. Sowerby that the choice must be left to her, he had the regrets of a man aware of his persuasive

arts and how they would be used, to think that he was actually making the choice.

Observe how fatefully he who has a scheme is the engine of it; he is no longer the man of his tastes or of his

principles; he is on a line of rails for a terminus; and he may cast languishing eyes across waysides to right

and left, he has doomed himself to proceed, with a selfdevouring hunger for the half desired; probably

manhood gone at the embrace of it. This may be or not, but Nature has decreed to him the forfeit of pleasure.

She bids us count the passage of a sober day for the service of the morrow; that is her system; and she would

have us adopt it, to keep in us the keen edge for cutting, which is the guarantee of enjoyment: doing

otherwise, we lose ourselves in one or other of the furious matrix instincts; we are blunt to all else.

Young Dudley fully agreed that the choice must be with Miss Radnor; he alluded to her virtues, her

accomplishments. He was waxing to fervidness. He said he must expect competitors; adding, on a start, that

he was to say, from his mother, she, in the case of an intention to present Miss Radnor at Court. . . .

Victor waved hand for a finish, looking as though his head had come out of hot water. He sacrificed Royalty

to his necessities, under a kind of sneer at its functions: "Court! my girl? But the arduous duties are over for

the season. We are a democratic people retaining the seductions of monarchy, as a friend says; and of course

a girl may like to count among the flowers of the kingdom for a day, in the list of Court presentations; no

harm. Only there's plenty of time . . . very young girls have their heads turnedthough I don't say, don't

Dudley was ushered into Mr. Inchling's room and introduced to the figurehead of the Firm of Inchling,

Pennergate, and Radnor: a respectable City merchant indeed, whom Dudley could readoff in a glimpse of

the downright contrast to his partner. He had heard casual remarks on the respectable City of London

merchant from Colney Durance. A short analytical gaze at him, helped to an estimate of the powers of the

man who kept him up. Mr. Inchling was a florid Cityfeaster, descendant of a line of City merchants, having

features for a wife to identify; as drovers, they tell us, can single one from another of their roundbellied

beasts. Formerly the leader of the Firm, he was now, after dreary fits of restiveness, kickings, false

prophecies of ruin, Victor's obedient carthorse. He sighed in set terms for the old days of the Firm, when, like

trouts in the current, the Firm had only to gape for shoals of good things to fatten it: a tale of English

prosperity in quiescence; narrated interjectorily among the byways of the City, and wanting only metre to

make it our national Poem. Mr. Inchling did not deny that grand mangers of golden oats were still somehow

constantly allotted to him. His wife believed in Victor, and deemed the loss of the balancing Pennergate a

gain. Since that lamentable loss, Mr. Inchling, under the irony of circumstances the Tory of Commerce, had

trotted and gallopped whither driven, racing like mad against his will and the rival nations now in the field to

force the pace; a name for enterprise; the close commercial connection of a man who speculatedwho, to

put it plainly, lived on his wits; hurried onward and onward; always doubting, munching, grumbling at

satisfaction, in perplexity of the gratitude which is apprehensive of black Nemesis at a turn of the road, to

confound so wild a whip as Victor Radnor. He had never forgiven the youth's venture in India of an

enormous purchase of Cotton many years back, and which he had repudiated, though not his share of the

hundreds of thousands realized before the refusal to ratify the bargain had come to Victor. Mr. Inchling dated

his first indigestion from that disquieting period. He assented to the praise of Victor's genius, admitting

benefits; his heart refused to pardon, and consequently his head wholly to trust, the man who robbed him of

his quondam comfortable feeling of security. And if you will imagine the sprite of the aggregate English

Taxpayer personifying Steam as the malignant who has despoiled him of the blessed SafetyAssurance he

once had from his God Neptune against invaders, you will comprehend the state of Mr. Inchling's mind in

regard to his terrific and bountiful, but very disturbing partner. He thanked heaven to his wife often, that he

had nothing to do with North American or South American mines and pastures or with South Africa and gold

and diamonds: and a wife must sometimes listen, mastering her inward comparisons. Dr. Schlesien had met

and meditated on this example of the island energy. Mr. Inchling was not permitted by his wife to be much

the guest of the Radnor household, because of the frequent meeting there with Colney Durance; Colney's

humour for satire being instantly in bristle at sight of his representative of English City merchants: "over

whom," as he wrote of the venerable body, "the disciplined and instructed Germans not deviously march;

whom acute and adventurous Americans, with half a cock of the eye in passing, compassionately outstrip."

He and Dr. Schlesien agreed upon Mr. Inchling. Meantime the latter gentleman did his part at the tables of

the wealthier City Companies, and retained his appearance of health; he was beginning to think, upon a

calculation of the increased treasures of those Companies and the country, that we, the Taxpayer, ought not to

leave it altogether to Providence to defend them; notwithstanding the watchful care of us hitherto shown by

our briny Providence, to save us from anxiety and expense. But there are, he said, "difficulties;" and the very

word could stop him, as commonly when our difficulty lies in the exercise of thinking.

Victor's African room, containing large wallmaps of auriferous regions, was inspected; and another, where

clerks were busy over miscellaneous Continents. Dudley Sowerby hoped he might win the maiden.

He and Victor walked in company Westward. The shop of Boyle and Luckwort, chemists, was not passed on

this occasion. Dudley grieved that he had to be absent from the next Concert for practice, owing to his

engagement to his mother to go down to the family seat near Tunbridge Wells. Victor mentioned his

relatives, the Duvidney maiden ladies, residing near the Wells. They measured the distance between Cronidge

Nesta told her father at home that the pair of them had been observed confidentially arm in arm, and

THERE is at times in the hearts of all men of active life a vivid wild moment or two of dramatic dialogue

between the veteran antagonists, Nature and Circumstance, when they, whose business it should be to be

joyfully one, furiously split; and the Dame is up with her shrillest querulousness to inquire of her offspring,

for the distinct original motive of his conduct. Why did he bring her to such a pass! And what is the gain? If

he be not an alienated issue of the great Mother, he will strongly incline to her view, that he put himself into

harness to join with a machine going the dead contrary way of her welfare; and thereby wrote himself

donkey, for his present reading. Soldiers, heroes, even the braided, even the wearers of the gay cock's

feathers, who get the honours and the pocketpieces, know the moment of her electrical eloquence. They

have no answer for her, save an index at the machine pushing them on yet farther under the enemy's line of

fire, where they pluck the golden wreath or the livid, and in either case listen no more. They glorify her

topping wisdom while on the march to confound it. She is wise in her way. But it is asked by the disputant, If

we had followed her exclusively, how far should we have travelled from our startingpoint? We of the world

and its prizes and duties must do her an injury to make her tongue musical to us, and her argument worthy of

attention. So it seems. How to keep the proper balance between those two testy old wranglers, that rarely pull

the right way together, is as much the task for men in the grip of the world, as for the wanton youthful fry

under dominion of their instincts; and probably, when it is done, man will have attained the golden age of his

Why be scheming? Victor asked. Unlike the gallant soldiery, his question was raised in the blush of a

success, from an examination of the quality of the thing won; although it had not changed since it was first

coveted; it was demonstrably the same: and an astonishing dry stick he held, as a reward for perpetual

agitations and perversions of his natural tastes. Here was a Dudley Sowerby, the direct issue of the

conception of Lakelands; if indeed they were not conceived together in one; and the young gentleman had

moral character, good citizen substance, and station, rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was firm.

Yet so far was it from hearty, that when hearing a professed satirist like Colney Durance remark on the

decorous manner of Dudley's transparent courtship of the girl, under his look of an awakened approval of

himself, that he appeared to be asking everybody:Do you not think I bid fair for an excellent father of

Philistines?Victor had a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the grandfather.

Poor Fredi, too!necessarily the mother: condemned by her hard fate to feel proud of Philistine babies!

Though women soon get reconciled to it! Or do they? They did once. What if his Fredi turned out one of the

modern young women, who have drunk of ideas? He caught himself speculating on that, as on a danger. The

Colney might not have been under prompting of Nataly when he derided Dudley; but Victor was at war with

the picture of her, in her compression of a cruel laugh, while her eyelids were hard shut, as if to exclude the

He hearkened to the Nature interrogating him, why had he stepped on a path to put division between himself

and his beloved?the smallest of gaps; and still the very smallest between nuptial lovers is a divisionand

that may become a mortal wound to their one life. Why had he roused a slumbering world? Glimpses of the

world's nurselike, oldfashioned, mothernightcap benevolence to its kicking favourites; its longsuffering

tolerance for the heroic breakers of its rough cast laws, while the decent curtain continues dropped, or lifted

only anklehigh; together with many scenes, lively suggestions, of the choice of ways he liked best, told of

things, which were better things, incomprehensibly forfeited. So that the plain sense of value insisted on more

He was as little disposed to reject it as to stop his course at a goal of his aim. Nevertheless, a gain thus poorly

estimated, could not command him to do a deed of humiliation on account of it. The speaking to this dry

Nataly was busy with her purchases of furniture, and the practice for the great August Concert. He dealt her

liberal encouragements, up to the verge of Dr. Themison's latest hummed words touching Mrs. Burman, from

which he jumped in alarm lest he should paralyze her again: the dear soul's dreaded aspect of an earthly

pallor was a spectre behind her cheeks, ready to rush forth. Fenellan brought Carling to dine with him; and

Themison was confirmed by Carling, with incidents in proof; Carling by Jarniman, also with incidents; one

very odd oneor so it seemed, in the fury of the first savour of it:she informed Jarniman, Skepsey said his

friend Jarniman said, that she had dreamed of making her appearance to him on the night of the 23rd August,

and of setting the date on the calendar over his desk, when she entered his room: "Sittingroom, not

bedroom; she was always quite the lady," Skepsey reported his Jarniman. Mrs. Burman, as a ghost, would

respect herself; she would keep to her character. Jarniman quite expected the dream to be verified; she was a

woman of her word: he believed she had received a revelation of the approaching fact: he was preparing for

Victor had to keep silent and discourse of general prosperity. His happy vivaciousness assisted him to feel it

by day. Nataly heard him at night, on a moan: "Poor soul!" and loudly once while performing an abrupt

demivault from back to side: "Perhaps now!" in a voice through doors. She schooled herself to breathe

Not being allowed to impart the distressing dose of comfort he was charged with, he swallowed it himself;

and these were the consequences. And an uneasy sleep was traditionally a matter for grave debate in the

Radnor family. The Duvidney ladies, Dorothea and Virginia, would have cited ancestral names, showing it to

be the worst of intimations. At night, lying on his back beneath a weight of darkness, one heavily craped

figure, distinguishable through the gloom, as a blot on a black pad, accused the answering darkness within

him, until his mind was dragged to go through the whole case by morning light; and the compassionate man

appealed to common sense, to, stamp and pass his delectable sophistries; as, that it was his intense

humaneness, which exposed him to an accusation of inhumanity; his prayer for the truly best to happen,

which anticipated Mrs. Burman's expiry. They were simple sophistries, fabricated to suit his needs, readily

taking and bearing the imprimatur of common sense. They refreshed him, as a chemical scent a crowded

All because he could not open his breast to Nataly, by reason of her feebleness; or feel enthusiasm in the

possession of young Dudley! A dry stick indeed beside him on the walk Westward. Good quality wood, no,

doubt, but dry, varnished for conventional uses. Poor dear Fredi would have to crown it like the Mayday

Dudley wished the great Citymerchant to appreciate him as a diligent student of commercial matters:

rivalries of Banks; Foreign and Municipal Loans, American Rails, and Argentine; new Companies of

wholesome appearance or sinister; or starting with a dram in the stomach, or born to bleat prostrate, like

sheep on their backs in a ditch; Trusts and Founders; Breweries bursting vats upon the markets, and England

prone along the gutters, gobbling, drunk for shares, and sober in the possession of certain of them. But when,

as Colney says, a grateful England has conferred the Lordship on her Brewer, he gratefully hands over the

establishment to his country; and both may disregard the howls of a Salvation Army of

shareholders.Beaten by the Germans in Brewery, too! Dr. Schlesien has his right to crow. We were ahead

of them, and they came and studied us, and they studied Chemistry as well; while we went on down our

happygo lucky old road; and then had to hire their young Professors, and then to import their beer. Have

the Germans more brains than we English? Victor's blood up to the dome of his cranium knocked the

patriotic negative. But, as old Colney says (and bother him, for constantly intruding!), the comfortably

successful have the habit of sitting, and that dulls the brain yet more than it eases the person: hence are we

outpaced; we have now to know we are racing. Victor scored a mark for one of his projects. A

wellconducted Journal of the sharpest pens in the land might, at a sacrifice of money grandly sunk, expose

to his English how and to what degree their sports, and their fierce feastings, and their opposition to ideas,

and their timidity in regard to change, and their execration of criticism applied to themselves, and their

unanimous adoption of it for a weapon against others, are signs of a prolonged indulgence in the cushioned

seat. Victor saw it. But would the people he loved? He agreed with Colney, forgetting the satirist's venom:

towit, that the journalists should be close under their editor's rod to put it in sound bold English;no

metaphors, no similes, nor flowery insubstantiality; but honest Saxon manger stuff: and put it repeatedly, in

contempt of the disgust of iteration; hammering so a soft place on the Anglican skull, which is rubbed in

consequence, and taught at last through soreness to reflect.A Journal?with Colney Durance for

Editor?and called conformably The WhippingTop? Why not, if it exactly hits the signification of the

Journal and that which it would have the country do to itself, to keep it going and truly topping? For there is

no vulgarity in a title strongly signifying the intent. Victor wrote it at night, naming Colney for Editor, with a

sum of his money to be devoted to the publication, in a form of memorandum; and threw it among the papers

Young Dudley had a funny inquisitiveness about Dartrey Fenellan; owing to Fredi's reproduction or imitation

of her mother's romantic sentiment for Dartrey, doubtless: a bit of jealousy, indicating that the dry fellow had

his feelings. Victor touchedoff an outline of Dartrey's history and character:the halfbrother of Simeon,

considerably younger, and totally different. "Dartrey's mother was Lady Charlotte Kiltorne, one of the

Clanconans; better mother than wife, perhaps; and no reproach on her, not a shadow; only she made the

General's Banknotes fly black paper. Andif you're for hereditythe queer point is, that Simeon, whose

mother was a soberminded woman, has always been the spendthrift. Dartrey married one of the Hennen

women, all an odd lot, all handsome. I met her once. Colney said, she came up here with a special

commission from the Prince of Darkness. There are women who stir the unholy in menwhether they mean

Dudley pursed to remark, that he could not say he did know. And good for Fredi if he did not know, and had

his objections to the knowledge! But he was like the men who escape colds by wrapping in comforters

"She played poor Dartrey pranks before he buriedhe behaved well to her; and that says much for him; he

has a devil of a temper. I've seen the blood in his veins mount to cracking. But there's the man: because she

was a woman, he never let it break out with her. And, by heaven, he had cause. She couldn't be left. She

tricked him, and she loved himpassionately, I believe. You don't understand women loving the husband

"I've no positive information; we shall hear when he comes back," Victor replied hurriedly. "He got a

drenching of all the damns in the British service from his Generalissimo one day at a Review, for a trooper's

negligencebutton or stock missing, or something; and off goes Dartrey to his hut, and breaks his sword,

and sends in his resignation. Good soldier lost. And I can't complain; he has been a righthand man to me

over in Africa. But a man ought to have some control of his temper, especially a soldier."

"Worse than that temper of Dartrey's, he can't forgive an injury. He bears a grudge against his country.

You've heard Colney Durance abuse old England. It's three parts factitious literary exercise. It's milk

beside the contempt of Dartrey's shrug. He thinks we're a dead people, if a people; `subsisting on our fat,' as

"We don't," Victor agreed. He disrelished his companion's mincing tone of a monumental security, and

yearned for Dartrey or Simeon or Colney to be at his elbow rather than this most commendable of orderly

citizens, who little imagined the treacherous revolt from him in the bosom of the gentleman cordially

signifying full agreement. But Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks.

They were in the Park of the dwindling press of carriages, and here was this young Dudley saying, quite

commendably: "It's a pity we seem to have no means of keeping our parks select."

Victor flung Simeon Fenellan at him in thought. He remembered a fable of Fenellan's, about a Society of the

Blest, and the salt it was to them to discover an intruder from below, and the consequent accelerated measure

Victor approved: with the deadened feeling common to us when first in sad earnest we consent to take life as

it is. He perceived, too, the comicality of his having to resign himself to the fatherly embrace of goodness.

Lakelands had him fast, and this young Dudley was the kernel of Lakelands. If he had only been

intellectually a little flexible in his morality! But no; he wore it cap � pie, like a medi�val knight his armour.

One had to approve. And there was no getting away from him. He was good enough to stay in town for the

practice of the opening overture of the amateurs, and the fluteduet, when his family were looking for him at

Tunbridge Wells; and almost every day Victor was waylaid by him at a corner of the Strand.

Occasionally, Victor appeared at the point of interception armed with Colney Durance, for whom he had

called in the Temple, bent on selfdefence, although Colney was often as bitter to his taste as to Dudley's.

Latterly the bitter had become a tonic. We rejoice in the presence of goodness, let us hope; and still an

impersonation of conventional goodness perpetually about us depresses. Dudley drove him to Colney for

relief. Besides it pleased Nataly, that he should be bringing Colney home; it looked to her as if he were

subjecting Dudley to critical inspection before he decided a certain question much, and foolishly, dreaded by

the dear soul. That quieted her. And another thing, she liked him to be with Colney, for a clog on him; as it

were, a tuningfork for the wild airs he started. A little pessimism, also, she seemed to like; probably as an

appeasement after hearing, and having to share, high flights. And she was, in her queer woman's way, always

reassured by his endurance of Colney's company:she read it to mean, that he could bear Colney's perusal

of him, and satiric stings. Victor had seen these petty matters among the various which were made to serve

his double and treble purposes; now, thanks to the operation of young Dudley within him, he felt them.

Preferring Fenellan's easy humour to Colney's acid, he was nevertheless braced by the latter's antidote to

For Victor Radnor and Colney Durance were the Optimist and Pessimist of their society. They might have

headed those tribes in the country. At a period when the omnibus of the world appears to its quaint occupants

to be going faster, men are shaken into the acceptation, if not performance, of one part or the other as it is

dictated to them by their temperaments. Compose the parts, and you come nigh to the meaning of the

Nineteenth Century: the mother of these gosling affirmatives and negatives divorced from harmony and

awakened by the slight increase of incubating motion to vitality. Victor and Colney had been champion

duellists for the rosy and the saturnine since the former cheerfully slaved for a small stipend in the City of his

affection, and the latter entered on an inheritance counted in niggard hundreds, that withdrew a briefless

barrister disposed for scholarship from the forlornest of seats in the Courts. They had foretold of one 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

Victor playedoff 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 dilemmaforeseen! He hands himself

to Pessimy, as it were a sugarcane, for the sour brute to suck the sugar and whack with the wood.No, he

cannot do it; he gets no compensation: Pessimy is invulnerable. You waste your time in hurling a common

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 piping 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

watercart spirting a stale water: or a London of the farewell dinnerparties, 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 had filled

them at the meanness of the Corsican, who posed after it as victim on St. Helena's rock; the scene in grey

dawn on Mantua's fortresswalls blasting him in the Courts of History, when he strikes for his pathetic

sublime. Victor remembered how he had been rhetorical, as the mouthpiece of his darlings. But he had in

memory prominently now the many glorious pictures of that mountainland beckoning to him, waving him to

fly forth from the London oven:lo, the Tyrolese limestone crags with livid peaks and snow lining shelves

and veins of the crevices; and folds of pinewood undulations closed by a shoulder of snow large on the blue;

and a dazzling pinnacle rising over green pastureAlps, the head of it shooting aloft as the blown billow, high

off a broken ridge, and widearmed in its pure white shroud beneath; tranced, but all motion in immobility,

to the heart in the eye; a splendid image of striving, up to crowned victory. And see the long valleysweeps

of the hanging meadows and maize, and lower vineyards and central tall green spires! Walking beside young

Dudley, conversing, observing too, Victor followed the trips and twists of a rill, that was lured a little further

down through scoops, ducts, and scaffolded channels to serve a wainwright. He heard the mountainsong of

the joyful water: a wrenrobin thrush on the dance down of a faun; till it was caught and muted, and the

silver foot slid along the channel, swift as moonbeams through a cloud, with an air of "Whither you will, so it

be on;" happy for service as in freedom. Then the yard of the inn below, and the rillwater twirling rounded

through the trouttrough, subdued, still lively for its beloved onward: dues to business, dues to pleasure; a

wedding of the two, and the wisest on earth:eh? like some one we know, and Nataly has made the

comparison. Fresh forellen for lunch: rhyming to Fenellan, he had said to her; and that recollection struck the

day to blaze; for his friend was a ruined military captain living on a literary quill at the time; and Nataly's

tender pleading, "Could you not help to give him another chance, dear Victor?"signifying her absolute

trust in his ability to do that or more or anything, had actually set him thinking of the Insurance Office; which

he started to prosperity, and Fenellan in it, previously an untutored rill of the mountains, if ever was one.

Colney or somebody says, that the greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become.But we must

have an aim, my friend, and success must be the aim of any aim!Yes, and, says Colney, you are to rejoice

in the disappointing miss, which saves you from being damned by your bullet on the centre. You're dead

against Nature, old Colney.That is to carry the flag of Liberty.By clipping a limb!

Victor overcame the Pessimist in his own royal cranium Court. He entertained a pronounced dissension with

bachelors pretending to independence. It could not be argued publicly, and the more the pity:for a slight

encouragement, he would have done it; his outlook over the waves of bachelors and (by present conditions

mostly constrained) spinstersand another outlook, midnight upon Phlegethon to the thoughts of men, made

him deem it urgent. And it helped the plea in his own excuse, as Colney pointed out to the son of Nature.

That, he had to admit, was true. He charged it upon Mrs. Burman, for twisting the most unselfish and noblest

of his thoughts; and he promised himself it was to cease on the instant when the circumstance, which Nature

was remiss in not bringing about today or tomorrow, had come to pass. He could see his Nataly's pained

endurance beneath her habitual submission. Her effort was a poor one, to conceal her dread of the day of the

On the Sunday previous to the day, Dr. Themison accompanied the amateurs by rail to Wrensham, to hear

"trial of the acoustics" of the Concerthall. They were a goodly company; and there was fun in the

railwaycarriage over Colney's description of Fashionable London's vast octopus Maladymonster, who was

letting the doctor fly to the tether of its longest filament for an hour, plying suckers on him the while. He had

the look, to general perception, of a man but halfescaped: and as when the notes of things taken by the

vision in front are being set down upon tablets in the head behind. Victor observed his look at Nataly. The

look was like a door aswing, revealing in concealing. She was not or did not appear struck by it: perhaps, if

observant, she took it for a busy professional gentleman's holiday reckoning of the hours before the return

train to his harness, and his arrangements for catching it. She was, as she could be on a day of trial, her

enchanting majestic self again defying suspicions. She was his true mate for breasting a world honoured in

Her singing of a duet with Nesta, called forth Dr. Themison's very warm applause. He named the greatest of

contraltos. Colney did better service than Fenellan at the luncheontable: he diverted Nataly and captured Dr.

Themison's ear with the narrative of his momentous expedition of European Emissaries, to plead the cause of

their several languages at the Court of Japan: a Satiric Serial tale, that hit incidentally the follies of the

countries of Europe, and intentionally, one had to think, those of Old England. Nesta set him going. Just

when he was about to begin, she made her father laugh by crying out in a rapture, "Oh! Delphica!" For she

was naughtily aware of Dudley Sowerby's distaste for the story and disgust with the damsel Delphica.

Nesta gave Dr. Themison the preliminary sketch of the grand object of the expedition: indeed one of the

eminent ones of the world; matter for an Epic; though it is to be feared, that our part in it will not encourage a

So, then, Japan has decided to renounce its language, for the adoption of the language it may choose among

the foremost famous European tongues. Japan becomes the word for miraculous transformations of a whole

people at the stroke of a wand; and let our English enrol it as the most precious of the powerful verbs. An

envoy visits the principal Seats of Learning in Europe. He is of a gravity to match that of his unexampled and

all but stupefying mission. A fluent linguist, yet an Englishman, the slight American accent contracted during

a lengthened residence in the United States is no bar to the patriotism urging him to pay his visit of exposition

and invitation from the Japanese Court to the distinguished Doctor of Divinity Dr. Bouthoin. The renown of

Dr. Bouthoin among the learned of Japan has caused the special invitation to him; a scholar endowed by an

ample knowledge and persuasive eloquence to cite and instance as well as illustrate the superior advantages

to Japan and civilization in the filial embrace of mother English. "For to this it must come predestinated,"

says the astonishing applicant. "We seem to see a fitness in it," says the cogitative Rev. Doctor. "And an

Island England in those waters, will do wonders for Commerce," adds the former. "We think of things more

pregnant," concludes the latter, with a dry gleam of ecclesiastical knowingness. And let the editor of the

Review upon his recent pamphlet, and let the prelate reprimanding him, and let the newspapers criticizing his

pure Saxon, have a care! Funds, universally the most convincing of credentials, are placed at Dr. Bouthoin's

disposal: only it is requested, that for the present the expedition be secret. "Better so," says pure Saxon's

champion. On a day patented for secrecy, and swearingin the whole American Continent through the cables

to keep the secret by declaring the patent, the Rev. Dr. Bouthoin, accompanied by his curate, the Rev.

Mancate Semhians, stumbling across portmanteaux crammed with lexicons and dictionaries and other tubes

of the voice of Hermes, takes possession of berths in the ship Polypheme, bound, as they mutually conceive,

for the biggest adventure ever embarked on by a farthoughted, highthoughted, patriotic pair speaking pure

Colney, with apologies to his hearers, avoided the custom of our period (called the Realistic) to create, when

casual opportunity offers, a belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience. He passed under veil

the Rev. Doctor's acknowledgement of Neptune's power, and the temporary collapse of Mr. Semhians.

Proceeding at once to the comments of these highclass missionaries on the really curious inquisitiveness of

certain of the foreign passengers on board, he introduced to them the indisputably learned, the very

argumentative, crashing, arrogant, pedantic, dogmatic, philological German gentleman, Dr. Gannius, reeking

of the Teutonic Professor, as a library volume of its leather. With him is his fairhaired artless daughter

Delphica. An interesting couple for the beguilement of a voyage: she so beautifully moderates his irascible

incisiveness! Yet there is a strange tone that they have. What, then, of the polite, the anecdotic Gallic M.

Falarique, who studiously engages the young lady in colloquy when Mr. Semhians is agitating outside them

to say a word? What of that outpouring, explosive, equally voluble, uncontrolled M. Bobinikine, a Mongol

Russian, shaped, featured, hued like the potboiled, round and tight young dumpling of our primitive

boyhood, which smokes on the dish from the pot? And what of another, hitherto unnoticed, whose nose is of

the booked vulturine, whose name transpires as Pisistratus Mytharete? He hears Dr. Bouthoin declaim some

lines of Homer, and beseeches him for the designation of that language. Greek, is it? Greek of the Asiatic

ancient days of the beginning of the poetic chants? Dr. Gannius crashes cachinnation. Dr. Bouthoin caps

himself with the offended Don. Mr. Semhians opens half an eye and a whole mouth. There must be a

mystery, these two exclaim to one another in privacy. Delphica draws Mr. Semhians aside. Blushing over his

white necktie, like the coast of Labrador at the transient wink of its Jackinthebox Apollo, Mr. Semhians

faintly tells of a conversation he has had with the ingenuous fair one; and she ardent as he for the throning of

our incomparable Saxon English in the mouths of the races of mankind. Strange!she partly suspects the

Frenchman, the Russian, the attentive silent Greek, to be all of them bound for the Court of Japan.

Concurrents? Can it be? We are absolutely to enter on a contention with rivals? Dr. Bouthoin speaks to Dr.

Gannius. He is astonished, he says; he could not have imagined it! "Have you ever imagined anything?" Dr.

Gannius asks him. Entomologist, botanist, pal�ontologist, philologist, and at sound of horn a ready

regimental corporal, Dr. Gannius wears good manners as a pair of bathslippers, to rally and kick his old

infant of an Englishman: who, in awe of his later renown and manifest might, makes it a point of discretion to

be ultra amiable; for he certainly is not in training, he has no alliances, and he must diplomatize; and the

German is a strong one; a relative too; he is the Saxon's cousin, to say the least. This German has the habit of

pushing past politeness to carry his argumentative war into the enemy's country: and he presents on all sides a

solid rampart of recent great deeds done, and mailed readiness for, the doing of more, if we think of assailing

him in that way. We are really like the poor beasts which have cast their shells or cases, helpless flesh to his

Whether more amused than amazed, we know not, Dr. Gannius hears from "our simpleton of the pastures," as

he calls the Rev. Doctor to his daughter, that he and Mr. Semhians have absolutely pushed forth upon this

most mighty of enterprises naked of any backing from their Government! Babes in the Wood that they are! �

la grace de dieu at every turn that cries for astutia, they show no sign or symbol of English arms behind them,

to supportand with the grandest of national prizes in view!the pleading oration before the Court of the

elect, erudites, we will call them, of an intelligent, yet half barbarous, people; hesitating, these, between

eloquence and rival eloquence, cunning and rival cunning. Why, in such a case, the shadownimbus of Force

is needed to decide the sinking of the scales. But have these English never read their Shakespeare, that they

show so barren an acquaintance with human, to say nothing of semibarbaric, nature? But it is here that we

Germans prove our claim to being the sons of his mind.Dr. Gannius, in contempt, throws off the mask: he

also is a concurrent. And not only is he the chosen by election of the chief Universities of his land, he has

behind him, as Athene dilating Achilles, the clenched fist of the Prince of thunder and lightning of his time.

German, Japan shall be! he publicly swears before them all. M. Falarique damascenes his sharpest smile; M.

Bobinikine doubledimples his puddingest; M. Mytharete rolls a forefinger over his beak; Dr. Bouthoin

enlarges his eye on a sunny mote. And such is the masterful effect of a frank diplomacy, that when one party

shows his hand, the others find the reverse of concealment in hiding their own. Dr. Bouthoin and Mr.

Semhians are compelled to suspect themselves to be encompassed with rivals, presumptively supported by

their Governments. The worthy gentlemen had hoped to tumble into good fortune, as in the blessed old

English manner. "It has ever been thus with us: unhelped we do it!" exclaims Rev. Doctor. He is roused from

dejection by hearing Mr. Semhians shyly (he has published verse) tell of the fairtressed Delphica's

phosphorial enthusiasm for our galaxy of British Poets. Assisted by Mr. Semhians, he begins to imagine, that

he has, in the person of this artless devotee, an ally, who will, through her worship of our Poets (by treachery

to her sirea small matter) sacrifice her guttural tongue, by enabling him (through the exercise of her arts,

charms, intriguesalso a small matter) to obtain the first audience of the Japanese erudites.Delphica, with

each of the rivals in turn, is very pretty Comedy. She is aware that M. Falarique is her most redoubtable

adversary, by the time that the vast fleet of steamboats (containing newspaper reporters) is beheld from the

Nesta glanced at Dudley Sowerby. She liked him for his pained frown at the part his countrymen were made

to play, but did wish that he would keep from expressing it in a countenance that suggested a worried knot;

"One bets on the German, of coursewith Colney Durance," Victor said to Dr. Themison, leading him over

"In any case, the author teaches us to feel an interest in the rivals. I want to know what comes of it," said the

"There's a good opportunity, one sees. But, mark me, it will all end in satire upon poor Old England.

"I do not think there is a country that could offer the entertainment for which I am indebted to you today."

"Shall we see you at our next concertevening in town?" said Victor; and hearing "the privilege" mentioned,

his sharp bright gaze cleared to limpid. "You have seen how it stands with us here!" At once he related what

Mrs. Burman Radnor had dropped words touching a husband, and of her desire to communicate with him, in

the event of her being given over to the surgeons: she had said, that her husband was a greatly gifted man;

setting her head in a compassionate swing. This revelation of the husband soon after, was filling. And this

Mr. Radnor's comrade's manner of it, was winning: a not too selfjustifying tone; not void of feeling for the

elder woman; with a manly eulogy of the younger, who had flung away the world for him and borne him their

one dear child. Victor took the blame wholly upon himself. "It is right that you should know," he said to the

doctor's thoughtful posture; and he stressed the blame; and a flame shot across his eyeballs. He brought home

to his hearer the hurricane of a man he was in the passion: indicating the subjection of such a temperament as

Dr. Themison said: "Would youwe postpone that as long as we can: but supposing the poor lady . . . ?"

We are grateful when spared the conclusion of a sentence born to stammer. If for that only, the doctor pressed

"I may, then, convey some form of assurance, that a request of the kind will be granted?" he said.

ROUND the neighbourhood of Lakelands it was known that the day of the great gathering there had been

authoritatively foretold as fine, by Mr. Victor Radnor; and he delivered his prophecy in the teeth of the

Southwestern gale familiar to our yachting month; and he really inspired belief or a kind of trust; some

supposing him to draw from reserves of observation, some choosing to confide in the singularly winged

sparkle of his eyes. Lady Rodwell Blachington did; and young Mrs. Blathenoy; and Mrs. Fanning; they were

enamoured of it. And when women stand for Hope, and any worshipped man for Promise, nothing less than

redoubled confusion of him dissolves the union. Even then they cling to it, under an ejaculation, that it might

and should have been otherwise; fancy partly has it otherwise, in her c�rulean home above the weeping. So it

A storm, bearing battle overhead, tore the night to pieces. Nataly's faith in the pleasant prognostic wavered

beneath the crashes. She had not much power of heart to desire anything save that which her bosom

disavowed. Uproar rather appeased her, calmness agitated. She wished her beloved to be spared from a

disappointment, thinking he deserved all successes, because of the rigours inflicted by her present

tonelessness of blood and being. Her unresponsive manner with him was not due to lack of fire in the blood

or a loss of tenderness. The tender feeling, under privations unwillingly imposed, though willingly shared,

now suffused her reflections, owing to a gratitude induced by a novel experience of him; known, as it may

chance, and as it does not always chance, to both sexes in wedded intimacy here and there; known to women

whose mates are proved quick to compliance with delicate inituitions of their moods of nature. A constant,

almost visible, image of the dark thing she desired, and was bound not to desire, and was remorseful for

desiring, oppressed her; a perpetual consequent warfare of her spirit and the nature subject to the thousand

sensational hypocrisies invoked for concealment of its reviled brutish baseness, held the woman suspended

from her emotions. She coldly felt that a caress would have melted her, would have been the temporary

rapture. Coldly she had the knowledge that the considerate withholding of it helped her spirit to escape a

stain. Less coldly, she thanked at heart her beloved, for being a gentleman in their yoke. It plighted them over

He talked to her on the pillow, just a few sentences; and, unlike himself, a word of City affairs: "That fellow

Blathenoy, with his increasing multitude of bills at the Bank: must watch him there, sit there regularly. One

rather likes his wife. By the way, if you see him near me tomorrow, praise the Spanish climate; don't forget.

Victor chuckled at Colney's humping of shoulders and mouth, while the tempest seemed echoing a

sulphureous pessimist. "If old Colney had listened to me, when India gave proof of the metal and South

Africa began heaving, he'd have been a fairly wealthy man by now . . . ha! it would have genialized him. A

man may be a curmudgeon with money: the rule is for him to cuddle himself and take a side, instead of

dashing at his countrymen all round and getting hated. Well, Colney popular, can't be imagined; but

entertaining guests would have diluted his acid. He has the six hundred or so ayear he started old bachelor

on; add his miserable pay for Essays. Literature! Of course, he sours. But don't let me hear of bachelors

moralists. There he sits at his Temple Chambers hatching epigrams . . . pretends to have the office of critic!

Honest old fellow, as far as his condition permits. I tell him it will be fine to morrow."

Victor smartly commended her to slumber, with heaven's blessing on her and a dose of soft nursery prattle.

He squeezed her hand. He kissed her lips by day. She heard him sigh settling himself into the breast of night

for milk of sleep, like one of the world's good children. She could have turned to him, to show him she was in

harmony with the holy night and loving world, but for the fear founded on a knowledge of the man he was; it

held her frozen to the semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord, in the aisle where horror kindles pitchy

blackness with its legions at one movement. Verily it was the ghost of Mrs. Burman come to the bed,

Meanwhile the sun of Victor Radnor's popularity was already up over the extended circle likely to be

drenched by a falsification of his daring augury, though the scud flew swift, and the beeches raved, and the

oaks roared and snarled, and pinetrees fell their lengths. Fine tomorrow, to a certainty! he had been heard

to say. The doubt weighed for something; the balance inclined with the gentleman who had become so

popular: for he had done the trick so suddenly, like a stroke of the wizard; and was a real man, not one of

your spangled zodiacs selling for sixpence and hopping to a lucky hit, laughed at nine times out of ten. The

reasoning wentand it somewhat affected the mansion as well as the cottage,that if he had become

popular in this astonishing fashion, after making one of the biggest fortunes of modern times, he might, he

must, have secret gifts. "You can't foretell weather!" cried a pothouse sceptic. But the workmen at Lakelands

declared that he had foretold it. Sceptics among the common folk were quaintly silenced by other tales of

How had he become suddenly so popular as to rouse in the mind of Mr. Caddis, the sitting Member for the

division of the county (said to have the seat in his pocket), a particular inquisitiveness to know the bearing of

his politics? Mr. Radnor was rich, true: but these are days when wealthy men, ambitious of notoriety, do not

always prove faithful to their class; some of them are cunning to bid for the suffrages of the irresponsible,

recklessly enfranchised, corruptible masses. Mr. Caddis, if he had the seat in his pocket, had it from the

support of a class trusting him to support its interests: he could count on the landowners, on the clergy, on the

retired or retiring or comfortably cushioned merchants resident about Wrensham, on the many obsequious

among electoral shopmen; annually he threw open his grounds, and he subscribed, patronized, did what was

expected; and he was not popular; he was unpopular. Why? But why was the sun of this 23rd August, shining

from its rise royally upon pacified, enrolled and liveried armies of cloud, more agreeable to earth's

populations than his pinched appearance of the poor mopped red nose and melancholic rheumy eyelets on a

January day! Undoubtedly Victor Radnor risked his repute of prophet. Yet his popularity would have

survived the continuance of the storm and deluge. He did this:and the mystery puzzling the suspicious was

nothing wonderful:in addition to a transparent benevolence, he spread a sort of assurance about him, that

he thought the better of the people for their thinking well of themselves. It came first from the workmen at his

house. "The right sort, and no humbug: likes you to be men." Such a report made tropical soil for any new

Now, it is a postulate, to strengthen all poor commoners, that not even in comparison with the highest need

we be small unless we yield to think it of ourselves. Do but stretch a hand to the touch of earth in you, and

you spring upon combative manhood again, from the basis where all are equal. Humanity's historians,

however, tell us, that the exhilaration bringing us consciousness of a stature, is gas which too frequently has

to be administered. Certes the cocks among men do not require the process; they get it off the sight of the sun

arising or a simple hen submissive: but we have our hibernating bears among men, our yoked oxen,

cabhorses, beaten dogs; we have on large patches of these Islands, a Saxon population, much wanting

assistance, if they are not to feel themselves beaten, driven, caught by the neck, yoked and heavyheaded.

Blest, then, is he who gives them a sense of the pride of standing on legs. Beer, ordinarily their solitary helper

beneath the iron canopy of wealth, is known to them as a bitter usurer; it knocks them flat in their persons and

their fortunes, for the short spell of recreative exaltation. They send up their rough glory round the name of

the gentlemana stranger, but their friend: and never is friend to be thought of as a strangerwho manages

to get the holiday for Wrensham and thereabout, that they may hurl away for one jolly day the old hat of a

doddered humbleness, and trip to the strains of the internal music he has unwound.

Says he: Is it a Charity Concert? Charity begins at home, says he: and if I welcome you gentry on behalf of

the poor of London, why, it follows you grant me the right to make a beginning with the poor of our parts

down here. He puts it so, no master nor mistress neither could refuse him. Why, the workmen at his house

were nigh pitching the contractors all sprawling on a strike, and Mr. Radnor takes train, harangues 'em and

rubs 'em smooth; ten minutes by the clock, they say; and return train to his business in town; by reason of

good sense and feeling, it was; poor men don't ask for more. A working man, all the world over, asks but

Mr. Caddis, M.P., pursuing the riddle of popularity, which irritated and repelled as constantly as it attracted

him, would have come nearer to an instructive presentment of it, by listening to these plain fellows, than he

was in the line of equipages, at a later hour of the day. The remarks of the comfortably cushioned and

wheeled, though they be eulogistic to extravagance, are vapourish when we court them for nourishment;

substantially, they are bones to the cynical. He heard enumerations of Mr. Radnor's riches, eclipsing his own

past compute. A merchant, a holder of mines, Director of a mighty Bank, projector of running Rails, a

princely millionaire, and determined to be popularwhat was the aim of the man? It is the curse of modern

times, that we never can be sure of our Parliamentary seat; not when we have it in our pockets! The Romans

have left us golden words with regard to the fickleness of the populace; we have our Horace, our Juvenal, we

have our Johnson; and in this vaunted age of reason it is, that we surrender ourselves into the hands of the

populace! Panem et circenses! Mr. Caddis repeated it, after his fathers; his fathers and he had not headed

them out of that original voracity. There they were, for moneyed legislators to bewail their appetites. And it

Pedestrian purchasers of tickets for the Charity Concert, rather openly, in an envelope of humour, confessed

to the bait of the Radnor bread with bit of fun. Savoury rumours were sweeping across Wrensham. Mr.

Radnor had borrowed footmen of the principal houses about. Cartloads of provisions had been seen to come.

An immediate reward of a deed of benevolence, is a thing sensibly heavenly; and the fiveshilling tickets

were paid for as if for a packet on the counter. Unacquainted with Mr. Radnor, although the reports of him

struck a summons to their gastric juices, resembling in its effect a clamorous cordiality, they were chilled, on

their steps along the halfrolled new gravelroad to the house, by seeing three tables of prodigious length,

where very evidently a feast had raged: one to plump the peopleperhaps excessively courted by great

gentlemen of late; shopkeepers, the villagers, children. These had been at it for two merry hours. They had

risen. They were beef and pudding on legs; in some quarters, beer amiably manifest, owing to the flourishes

of a military band. Boys, who had shaken room through their magical young corporations for fresh stowage,

darted out of a chasing circle to the crumbled cornucopia regretfully forsaken fifteen minutes back, and

buried another tart. Plenty still reigned: it was the will of the Master that it should.

We divert our attention, resigned in stoic humour, to the bill of the Concert music, handed us with our tickets

at the parkgates: we have no right to expect refreshment; we came for the music, to be charitable. Signora

Bianca Luciani: of whom we have read almost to the hearing her; enough to make the mistake at times. The

grand violinist Durandarte: forcibly detained on his way to America. Mr. Radnor sent him a blank

cheque:no!so Mr. Radnor besought him in person: he is irresistible; a great musician himself; it is

becoming quite the modern style. We have now English noblemen who play the horn, the fifethe drum,

England's nobles as a musical band at the head of a marching and dancing population, pictured happily an old

Conservative country, that retained its members of aristocracy in the foremost places while subjecting them

to downright uses. Their ancestors, beholding them there, would be satisfied on the point of honour; perhaps

But middleclass pedestrians, having paid five shillings for a ticket to hear the music they love, and not

having full assurance of refreshment, are often, latterly, satirical upon their superiors; and, over this country

at least, require the refreshment, that the democratic sprouts in them may be reconciled with aristocracy. Do

not listen to them further on the subject. They vote safely when the day comes, if there is no pr�ternaturally

They perceive the name of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby, fourth down the Concertbill; marked for a fluteduet

with Mr. Victor Radnor, Miss Nesta Victoria Radnor accompanying at the piano. It may mean? . . . do you

want a whisper to suggest to you what it may mean? The father's wealth is enormous; the mother is a

beautiful majestic woman in her prime. And see, she sings: a wonderful voice. And lower down, a duet with

her daughter: violins and clarionet; how funny; something Hungarian. And in the Second Part, Schubert's

Ave MariaOh! when we hear that, we dissolve. She was a singer before he married her, they say: a lady by

birth: one of the first County families. But it was a gift, and she could not be kept from it, and was going,

when they metand it was love! the most perfect duet. For him she abandoned the Stage. You must

remember, that in their young days the Stage was many stages beneath the esteem entertained for it now.

Domestic Concerts are got up to gratify her: a Miss Fredericks: good old English name. Mr. Radnor calls his

daughter, Freddy; so Mr. Taplow, the architect, says. They are for modern music and ancient. Tannh�user,

Wagner, you see. Pergolese. Fluteduet, Mercadante. Here we have him! Durandarte: Air Basque,

variationshis own, Again, Se*or Durandarte, Mendelssohn. Encore him, and he plays you a national piece.

A dark little creature a Lifeguardsman could holdup on his outstretched hand for the fifteen minutes of the

performance; but he fills the hall and thrills the heart, wafts you to heaven; and does it as though he were

conversing with his Andalusian ladylove in easy whispers about their mutual passion for Spanish chocolate

all the while: so the musical critic of the TirraLirra says. Express trains every half hour from London; all the

big people of the city. Mr. Radnor commands them, like Royalty. Totally different from that old figure of the

wealthy City merchant; young, vigorous, elegant, a man of taste, highest culture, speaks the languages of

Europe, patron of the Arts, a perfect gentleman. His mother was one of the Montgomerys, Mr. Taplow says.

And it was General Radnor, a most distinguished officer, dying knighted. But Mr. Victor Radnor would not

take less than a Baronyand then only with descent of title to his daughter, in her own right.

Carriages were in flow for an hour: pedestrians formed a wavy coil. Judging by numbers, the entertainment

was a success, would the hall contain them? Marvels were told of the hall. Every ticket entered and was

enfolded; almost all had a seat. Chivalry stood. It is a breeched abstraction, sacrificing voluntarily and

genially to the Fair, for a restoring of the balance between the sexes, that the division of good things be rather

in the fair ones' favour, as they are to think: with the warning to them, that the establishment of their claim for

equality puts an end to the priceless privileges of petticoats. Women must be mad, to provoke such a

warning; and the majority of them submissively show their good sense. They send up an incense of

perfumery, all the bouquets of the chemist commingled; most nourishing to the idea of woman in the nose of

man. They are a forest foliagerustle of silks and muslins, magic interweaving, or the mythology, if you

prefer it. See, hear, smell, they are June, Venus, Hebe, to you. We must have poetry with them; otherwise

they are better in the kitchen. Is therebut there is not; there is not present one of the chivalrous breeched

who could prefer the shocking emancipated gristly female, which imposes propriety on our sensations and

inner dreams, by petrifying in the tender bud of them. Colonel Corfe is the man to hear on such a theme. He

is a colonel of Companies. But those are his diversion, as the British Army has been to the warrior. Puellis

idoneus, he is professedly a lady's man, a rosebeetle, and a fine specimen of a common kind: and he has

been that thing, that shining delight of the lap of ladies, for a spell of years, necessitating a certain sparkle of

the saccharine crystals preserving him, to conceal the muster. He has to be fascinating, or he would look

outworn, forlorn. On one side of him is Lady Carmine; on the other, Lady Swanage; dames embedded in the

blooming maturity of England's conservatory. Their lords (an Earl, a Baron) are of the lords who go down to

the City to sow a title for a repair of their poor incomes, and are to be commended for frankly accepting the

new dispensation while they retain the many advantages of the uncancelled ancient. Thus gently does a

maternal Old England let them down. Projectors of Companies, Directors, Founders; Railway magnates,

actual kings and nobles (though one cannot yet persuade old reverence to do homage with the ancestral

spontaneity to the uncrowned, uncoroneted, people of our sphere); holders of Shares in gold mines, Shares in

Afric's blue mud of the glittering teeth we draw for English beauty to wear in the ear, on the neck, at the

wrist; Bankers and wives of Bankers. Victor passed among them, chatting right and left.

She serenely understood. Artistes are licensed people, with a Bohemian instead of the titular glitter for the

bewildering of moralists; as paste will pass for diamonds where the mirror is held up to Nature by bold

He wished to introduce Nesta. His girl was on the raised orchestral flooring. Nataly held her fast to a

Mr. Peridon, sad for the absence and cause of absence of Louise de Seilles,summoned in the morning

abruptly to Bourges, where her brother lay with his life endangered by an accident at Artillery practice,Mr.

Peridon was generally conductor. Victor was to lead the full force of amateurs in the brisk overture to Zampa.

He perceived a movement of Nataly, Nesta, and Peridon. "They have come," he said; he jumped on the

orchestra boards and hastened to greet the Luciani with Durandarte in the retiringroom.

His departure raised the whisper that he would wield the b�ton. An opinion was unuttered. His name for the

fluteduet with the Hon. Dudley Sowerby had not provoked the reserve opinion; it seemed, on the whole, a

pretty thing in him to condescend to do: the sentiment he awakened was not flustered by it. But the act of

leading, appeared as an official thing to do. Our souffl� of sentiment will be seen subsiding under a breath,

without a repressive word to send it down. Sir Rodwell Blachington would have preferred Radnor's not

leading or playing either. Colonel Corfe and Mr. Caddis declined to consider such conduct English, in a man

of station . . . notwithstanding Royal Highnesses, who are at least partly English: partly, we say, under our

breath, remembering our old ideal of an English gentleman, in opposition to German tastes. It is true, that the

The colonel fished for Lady Carmine's view.And Lady Swanage too? Both of the distinguished ladies

approved of Mr. Radnor's leadingfor a leading off. Women are pleased to see their favourite in the place of

prominenceas long as Fortune swims him unbuffeted, or one should say, unbattered, up the mounting

wave. Besides these ladies had none of the colonel's remainder of juvenile English sense of the manly, his

adolescent's intolerance of the eccentric, suspicion and contempt of any supposed affectation, which was not

ostentatiously, stalkingly practised to subdue the sex. And you cannot wield a b�ton without looking affected.

And at one of the Colonel's Clubs in town, only five years back, an English musical composer, who had not

then made his moneynow by the mystery of events knighted!had been (he makes now fifteen thousand a

year) blackballed. "Fiddler? no; can't admit a Fiddler to associate on equal terms with gentlemen." Only five

A sprinkling of the minor ladies also would have been glad if Mr. Radnor had kept himself somewhat more

exclusive. Dr. Schlesien heard remarks, upon which his weighty Teutonic mind sat crushingly. Do these

English care one bit for music?for anything finer than material stuffs?what that man Durance calls,

`their beef, their beer, and their pew in eternity'? His wrath at their babble and petty brabble doubted that they

But they do. Art has a hold of them. They pay for it; and the thing purchased grapples. It will get to their

bosoms to breathe from them in time: entirely overcoming the taste for feudalism, which still a little objects

to see their born gentleman acting as leader of musicians. A people of slow movement, developing tardily,

their country is wanting in the distincter features, from being always in the transitional state, like certain

seafish rolling head overyou know not head from tail. Without the Welsh, Irish, Scot, in their

composition, there would not be much of the yeasty ferment: but it should not be forgotten that Welsh, Irish,

Scot, are now largely of their numbers; and the taste for elegance, and for spiritual utterance, for Song, nay,

for Ideas, is there among them, though it does not everywhere cover a rocky surface to bewitch the eyes of

aliens;like Louise de Seilles and Dr. Schlesien, for example; aliens having no hostile disposition toward

the people they were compelled to criticize; honourably granting, that this people has a great history. Even

such has the Lion, with Homer for the transcriber of his deeds. But the gentle aliens would image our

emergence from wildness as the unsocial spectacle presented by the drear menagerie Lion, alone or mated;

with hardly an animated moment save when the raw red joint is beneath his paw, reminding him of the

Nevertheless, where Strength is, there is hope:it may be said more truly than of the breath of Life; which is

perhaps but the bucket of breath, muddy with the sediment of the well: whereas we have in Strength a hero, if

a malefactor; whose muscles shall haul him up to the light he will prove worthy of, when that divinity has

shown him his uncleanness. And when Strength is not exercising, you are sure to see Satirists jump on his

back. Dozens, foreign and domestic, are on the back of Old England; a tribute to our quality if at the same

time an irritating scourge. The domestic are in excess; and let us own that their view of the potentate, as an

apathetic beast of power, who will neither show the power nor woo the graces; pretending all the while to be

eminently above the beast, and posturing in an inefficient mimicry of the civilized, excites to satire. Colney

Durance had his excuses. He could point to the chief creative minds of the country for generations, as

beginning their survey genially, ending venomously, because of an exasperating unreason and scum in the

bubble of the scenes, called social, around them. Viola under his chin, he gazed along the crowded hall,

which was to him a rich national pudding of the sycophants, the hypocrites, the burlies, the idiots; dregs of

the depths and froth of the surface; bowing to one, that they may scorn another; instituting a Charity, for their

poorer fawning fellows to relieve their purses and assist them in tricking the world and their Maker:and so

forth, a tiresome tirade: and as it was not on his lips, but in the stomach of the painful creature, let him grind

that hurdygurdy for himself. His friend Victor set it stirring: Victor had here what he aimed at! How

Success derides Ambition! And for this he imperilled the happiness of the worthy woman he loved! Exposed

her to our fenfogs and foul snakesof whom one or more might be in the assembly now: all because of his

insane itch to be the bobbing cork on the wave of the minute! Colney's rapid interjections condensed upon the

habitual shrug at human folly, just when Victor, fronting the glassy stare of Colonel Corfe, tapped to start his

We soon perceive that the post Mr. Radnor fills he thoroughly fills, whatever it may be. Zampa takes horse

from the opening. We have no amateur conductor riding ahead: violins 'cellos, piano, windstops: Peridon,

Catkin, Pempton, Yatt, Cormyn, Colney, Mrs. Cormyn, Dudley Sowerby: they are spirited on, patted,

subdued, muted, raised, rushed anew, away, held in hand, in both hands. Not earnestness worn as a cloak, but

issuing, we see; not simply a leader of musicians, a leader of men. The halo of the millionaire behind, assures

us of a development in the character of England's merchant princes. The homage we pay him flatters us. A

delightful overture, masterfully executed; ended too soon; except that the programme forbids the ordinary

interpretation of prolonged applause. Mr. Radnor is one of those who do everything consummately. And we

have a monition within, that a course of spiritual enjoyment will rouse the call for bodily refreshment. His

genial nod and laugh and word of commendation to his troop persuade us oddly, we know not how, of

provision to come. At the door of the retiringroom, see, he is congratulated by Luciani and Durandarte. Miss

Priscilla Graves is now to sing a Schumann. Down later, it is a duet with the Rev. Septimus Barmby. We

have nothing to be ashamed of in her, before an Italian Operatic singer! Ices after the first part is over.

HAD Nataly and Nesta known who was outside helping Skepsey to play ball with the boys, they would not

have worked through their share of the performance with so graceful a composure. Even Simeon Fenellan

was unaware that his halfbrother Dartrey had landed in England. Dartrey went first to Victor's office, where

he found Skepsey packing the day's letters and circulars into the bag for the delivery of them at Lakelands.

They sprang a chatter, and they missed the last of the express trains: which did not greatly signify, Skepsey

said, "as it was a Concert." To hear his hero talk, was the music for him; and he richly enjoyed the pacing

Arrived on the grounds, they took opposite sides in a game of rounders, at that moment tossing heads or tails

for innings. These boys were slovenly players, and were made unhappy by Skepsey's fussy instructions to

them in smartness. They had a stupid way of feeding the stick, and they ran sprawling; it concerned Great

Britain for them to learn how to use their legs. It was pitiful for the country to see how lumpish her younger

children were. Dartrey knew his little man and laughed, after warning him that his English would want many

lessons before they stomached the mixture of discipline and pleasure. So it appeared: the pride of the boys in

themselves, their confidence, enjoyment of the game, were all gone; and all were speedily out but Skepsey;

who ran for the rounder, with his coat off, sharp as a porpoise, and would have got it, he had it in his grasp,

when, at the jump, just over the line of the goal, a clever fling, if ever was, caught him a crack on that part of

the human frame where sound is best achieved. Then were these young lumps transformed to limber, lither,

merry fellows. They rejoiced Skepsey's heart; they did everything better, ran and dodged and threw in a style

to win the nod from the future official inspector of Games and Amusements of the common people; a deputy

of the Government, proposed by Skepsey to his hero with a deferential eagerness. Dartrey clapped him on the

"SystemMr. Durance is rightthey must have system, if they are to appreciate a holiday," Skepsey said;

and he sent a wretched gaze around, at the justification of some of the lurid views of Mr. Durance, in signs of

the holiday wasted; impoverishing the country's manhood: in a small degree, it may be argued, but we ask,

can the country afford it, while foreign nations are drilling their youth, teaching them to be ready to move in

squads or masses, like the fist of a pugilist. Skepsey left it to his look to speak his thought. He saw an enemy

in tobacco. The drowsiness of beer had stretched various hulks under trees. Ponderous cricket lumbered

halfalive. Flabby fun knockedup a yell. And it was rather vexatious to see girls dancing in good time to the

bandmusic. One had a male partner, who hopped his loutish burlesque of the thing he could not do.

Apparently, too certainly, none but the girls had a notion of orderly muscular exercise. Of what use are girls!

Girls have their one mission on earth; and let them be healthy by all means, for the sake of it; only, they

should not seem to prove that Old England is better represented on the female side. Skepsey heard, with a nip

of spite at his bosom, a small body of them singing in chorus as they walked in step, arm in arm, actually

marched: and to the rearward, none of these girls heeding, there were the louts at their burlesque of jigs and

The song, which drew Dartrey Fenellan to the quick of an English home, planted him at the same time in

Africa to hear it. Dewy on a parched forehead it fell, England the shedding heaven.

He fetched a deep breath, as of gratitude for vital refreshment. He had his thoughts upon the training of our

English to be something besides the machinery of capitalists, and upon the country as a blessed mother

He flicked his leg with the stick he carried, said: "Your master's the man to make a change among them, old

friend!" and strolled along to a group surrounding two fellows who shammed a bout at singlestick. Vacuity

in the attack on either side, contributed to the joint success of the defence. They paused under inspection; and

The sticks were handed to them; the crowd increased; their rounders boys had spied them, and came trooping

to the scene. Skepsey was directed to hit in earnest. His defensive attitude flashed, and he was at head and

right and left leg, and giving point, recovering, thrusting madly, and again at shoulder and thigh, with bravos

for reward of a man meaning business; until a topper on his hat, a cut over the right thigh, and the stick in his

middlerib, told the spectators of a scientific adversary; and loudly now the gentleman was cheered. An

undercurrent of warm feeling ran for the plucky little one at it hot again in spite of the strokes, and when he

fetched his master a handsome thud across the shoulder, and the gentleman gave up and complimented him,

Skepsey had applause. He then begged his hero to put the previous couple in position, through a few of the

opening movements. They were horribly sheepish at first. Meantime two boys had got hold of sticks, and

both had gone to work in Skepsey's gallant style; and soon one was howling. He excused himself, because of

the funnybone, situated, in his case, higher than usual up the arm. And now the pair of men were giving and

Skepsey watched them, in felicity for love of the fray, pained by the disregard of science.

Comments on the pretty play, indicating a reminiscent acquaintance with it, and the capacity for critical

observations, were started. Assaults, wonderful tricks of a slashing Life Guardsman, one spectator had

witnessed at an exhibition in a London hall. Boxing too. You may see displays of boxing still in places. How

about a prizefight?With money on it?Eh, but you don't expect men to stand up to be knocked into

rumpsteaks for nothing?No, but it's they there bets!Right, and that's a game gone to ruin along of

Great English names of young days, before the wintry shadow of the law had blighted them, received their

withered laurels. Emulous boys were in the heroic posture. Good! sparring does no hurt: Skepsey seized a

likely lad, Dartrey another. Nature created the Ring for them. Now then, arms and head well up, chest hearty,

shoulders down, out with the right fist, just below the level of the chin; out with the left fist farther, right out,

except for that bit of curve; so, and draw it slightly back for warypussy at the spring. Firm you stand,

feeling the muscles of both legs, left half a pace ahead, right planted, both stringy. None of your milkpail

looks; show us jaw, you bulldogs. Now then, left from the shoulder, straight at right of head.Good, and

alacrity called on vigour in Skepsey's pupil; Dartrey's had the fist on his mouth before he could parry right

arm up. "Foul blow!" Dartrey cried. Skepsey vowed to the contrary. Dartrey reiterated his charge. Skepsey

was a figure of the negative, gesticulating and protesting. Dartrey appealed tempestuously to the Ring;

Skepsey likewise, in a tone of injury. He addressed a remonstrance to Captain Dartrey. "Hang your captain,

sir! I call you a coward; come on," said the resolute gentleman, already in ripe form for the attack. His blue

eyes were like the springing sunrise over ridges of the seas; and Skepsey jumped to his meaning.

Boys and men were spectators of a real scientific setto, a lovely show. They were half puzzled, it seemed so

deadly. And the little one got in his blows at the gentleman, who had to be hopping. Only, the worse the

gentleman caught it, the friendlier his countenance became. That was the wonder, and that gave them the key.

"And now, you fellows, you're to know, that this is one of the champions; and you take your lesson from him

and thank him," Dartrey said, as he turned on his heel to strike and greet the flow from the house.

"Dartrey come!" Victor, Fenellan, Colney, had him by the hand in turn. Pure sweetness of suddenly

awakened joy sat in Nataly's eyes as she swam to welcome him. Nesta moved a step, seemed hesitating, and

Victor hurriedly pronounced the formal introduction between the Hon. Dudley Sowerby and Captain Dartrey

Fenellan. The bronze face and the milky bowed to one another ceremoniously; the latter faintly flushing.

"Ah, dear, dear!" sighed Fenellan; "and out of good comes evil!as grandfather Deucalion exclaimed, when

he gallantly handed up his dripping wife from the mud of the Deluge waters. Do you mean to be running and

"Lord, Simmy, what a sound of home there is in your old nonsense!" Dartrey said.

His eyes of strong dark blue colour and the foreign swarthiness of his brows and cheeks and neck mixed the

The billbroker's fairtressed young wife whispered of curiosity concerning him to Nataly. He dressed like a

Mrs. Blathenoy imagined a something in Mrs. Radnor's tone. She could account for it; not by the ordinary

reading of the feminine in the feminine, but through a husband who professed to know secrets. She was

young in years and experience, ten months wedded, disappointedly awakened, enlivened by the hour, kindled

by a novel figure of man, fretful for a dash of imprudence. This Mrs. Radnor should be the one to second her

very innocent turn for a galopade; her own position allowed of any little diverting jig or reel, or plunge in a

bathshe required it, for the domestic Jacob Blathenoy was a dry chip: proved such, without a day's

variation during the whole of the ten wedded months. Nataly gratified her spoken wish. Dartrey Fenellan

bowed to the lady, and she withdrew him, seeing composedly that other and greater ladies had the wish

ungratified. Their husbands were not so rich as hers, and their complexions would hardly have pleased the

Banquet, equal to a blast of trumpet, was the detaining word for the multitude. It circulated, one knows not

how. Eloquent as the whiffs to the sniffs (and nowhere is eloquence to match it, when the latter are sharpened

from within to without), the word was very soon over the field. Mr. Carling may have helped; he had it from

Fenellan; and he was among the principal groups, claiming or making acquaintances, as a lawyer should do.

The Concert was complimentarily a topic: Durandarte divine!did not everybody think so? Everybody did,

in default of a term for overtopping it. Our language is poor at hyperbole; our voices are stronger. Gestures

and heavensent eyeballs invoke to display the ineffable. Where was Durandarte now? Gone; already gone;

off with the Luciani for evening engagements; he came simply to oblige his dear friend Mr. Radnor. Cheque

fifty guineas: hardly more on both sides than an exchange of smiles. Ah, these merchantprinces! What of

Mr. Radnor's amateur instrumentalists? Amateurs, they are not to be named: perfect musicians. Mr. Radnor is

the perfection of a host. Yes, yes; Mrs. Radnor; Miss Radnor too: delicious voices; but what is it about Mr.

Radnor so captivating! He is not quite English, yet he is not at all foreign. Is he very adventurous in business,

The crowd interjected, halfsighing. We ought to be proud of such a man! Perhaps we are a trifle

exaggerating, says its heart. But that we are wholly grateful to him, is a distinct conclusion. And he may be

Lady Rodwell Blachington observed to Colney Durance: "Mr. Radnor bids fair to become the idol of the

"If he can prove himself to be sufficiently the dupe of the English people," said Colney.

"Idoldupe?" interjected Sir Rodwell, and his eyebrows fixed at the perch of Colney's famous `national

interrogation' over vacancy of understanding, as if from the pull of a string. He had his audience with him;

and the satirist had nothing but his inner gush of acids at sight of a planted barb.

Colney was asked to explain. He neve explained. He performed a series of astonishing leaps, like the branchy

baboon above the traveller's head in the tropical forest, and led them into the trap they assisted him to prepare

for them. "No humour, do you say? The English have no humour?" a nephew of Lady Blachington's inquired

of him, with polite pugnacity, and was cordially assured that "he vindicated them."

"And Altruistic! another specimen of the modern coinage," a classical Church dignitary, in grammarian

Colney prickedup his ears. It struck him that he might fish for suggestions in aid of the Grand Argument

before the Elders of the Court of Japan. Dr. Wardan, whose recognition he could claim, stated to him, that the

lady and he were enumerating words of a doubtfully legitimate quality now being inflicted upon the

"But a piratetongue, cutoff from its roots, must continue to practise piracy, surely, or else take

"If insular. They will consequently be incommunicable to foreigners. You would, then, have us be trading

with tokens instead of a precious currency? Yet I cannot perceive the advantage of letting our ideas be

clothed so racy of the obscener soil; considering the pretensions of the English language to become the

universal. If we refuse additions from above, they force themselves on us from below."

"One is to understand that the English language has these pretensions?" he said:he minced in his manner,

after the wellknown mortarboard and tassel type; the mouthing of a petrifaction: clearly useless to the

He gave no grip to Colney, who groaned at cheap Donnish sarcasm, and let him go, after dealing him a hard

There was Victor all over the field netting his ephemer*! And he who feeds on them, to pay a price for their

Nesta came tripping from the Rev. Septimus Barmby. "Dear Mr. Durance, where is Captain Dartrey?"

Mrs. Blathenoy had just conducted her husband through a crowd, for an introduction of him to Captain

Dudley Sowerby followed Nesta closely: he struck across the path of the Rev. Septimus: again he had the

"Mr. Radnor was excellent. He does everything consummately: really, we are all sensible of it. I am. He must

lead us in a symphony. These light `champagne overtures' of French composers, as Mr. Fenellan calls them,

do not bring out his whole ability:Zampa, Le pr� auxclercs, Masaniello, and the like."

"He is impetuous, he is so fervent. But, Miss Radnor, I could not be the runawaywith you . . . with you at

"I am not hungry. I would so much rather talkhear you. But you are hungry? You have been singing:

twice: three times! Opera singers, they say, eat hot suppers; they drink stout. And I never heard your voice

more effective. Yours is a voice that . . . something of the feeling one has in hearing cathedral voices: carry

one up. I remember, in Dresden, once, a Fr�ulein K�hnstreich, a prodigy, very young, considering her

Nesta wondered at Dartrey Fenellan for staying so long with Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy.

"Ah, Mr. Sowerby, if I am to have flattery, I cannot take it as a milliner's dumby figure wears the beautiful

"Oh! do, I beg, Miss . . . You have a Christian name: and I too: and once . . . not Mr. Sowerby: yes, it was

He was deepening to the Barmby intonationapparently Cupid's; but a shade more airily Pagan, not so

Her father had withdrawn Dartrey Fenellan from Mr. and Mrs. Blathenoy. Dr. Schlesien was bowing with

"And if Durandarte would onlybut you are one with Miss Graves to depreciate my Durandarte, in favour

of the more classical Jachimo; whom we all admire; but you shall be just," said she, and she pouted. She had

seen her father plant Dartrey Fenellan in the midst of a group of City gentlemen.

Simeon touched among them to pluck at his brother. He had not a chance; he retired, and swam into the

"It's a matter of mines, and they're hovering in the attitude of the query, like corkscrews over a bottle,

"Pray, stay and be consoled by me," said the fair young woman. "You are to point me out all the

"Dartrey no longer wears the red. Here comes Colonel Corfe, who does. England has her army still!"

"For her? How very very sad! Tell mewhat a funnilydressed woman meeting that gentleman!"

"Superb toilettes!" The colonel eyed Mrs. Blathenoy dilatingly, advanced, bowed, and opened the siege.

She decided a calculation upon his age, made a wall of it, smilingly agreed with his encomium of the

Concert, and toned her voice to Fenellan's comprehension: "Did it occur recently?"

"Such numbers of people one would wish to know! Who are those ladies holding a Court, where Mr. Radnor

The colonel's intelligence ran a dog's nose for a lady's interjections. "The romance? . . . at forty, fifty? gone?

Miss Julinks, the great heiress and a beauty, has chosen him over the heads of all the young men of his time.

"Now you direct my attention to him," said Fenellan, "the writing of the romantic history has made the

It was thrown to where the person stood who had first within a few minutes helped her to form critical

"Locks and bolts, clock wrong, hands and arms, kneelingthe fourth act of the Huguenots!"

"Oh! well!" she flushed. She did not hear the neglected and astonished colonel speak, and she sought

diversion in saying to Fenellan: "So many people of distinction are assembled here to day! Tell me, who is

"Like flappers of a penguin: and advances in jerks: he is head of the great Firm of Quatley Brothers: Sir

Abraham: finances or farms one of the South American Republics: we call him, Pride of Port. He consumes it

"People of distinction indeed! That little manis your upper lip underrating him? . . . When a lady's lip is

erratically disdainful, it suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted,

punishedhowwho can say?that little man, now that little man, with a lift of his little finger, could

Mrs. Blathenoy shook. Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim: "Bacon Market!" she let fly a peal. Then she turned

to a fresh satellite, a round and a ruddy, `at her service ever,' Mr. Beaves Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan's

words. He, in unfeigned wonderment at such unsuspected powers, cried: "Dear me!" and stared at the little

He had missed the Concert. Was it firstrate? Ecstasy answered in the female voice.

"Ah, my dear ma'am, if I'd had Blathenoy's luck when he made a certain appointment. And he was not so

Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in triumph. The colonel's eyebrows were up in fixity

over sleepy lids. He brightened to propose the conducting of the pretty woman to the banquet.

"We shall see them going in," said she. "Mr. Radnor has a French cook, who does wonders. But I heard him

asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing. I'm sure he expected The Marigolds at his Concert."

"Anything to oblige the company," said the rustic ready chorister, clearing his throat.

The lady's feet were bent in the direction of a grassy knoll, where sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the

sex eclipsed at a distance its roses and lilies. Fenellan saw Dartrey, still a centre of the merchantmen, strolling

"And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine with us next week, Thursday, down here," she

Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down: he was not the antidote. She said to him: "Luciani's voice

The colonel replied: "I remember," and corrected himself, "at Eton, in jackets: she was not so particularly

slim; never knew how to dress. You beat Italians there! She moved one as a youngster."

"Why, hulloa, don't I remember her coming out!and do you mean to tell me," Mr. Beaves Urmsing brutally

addressed the colonel, "that you were at Eton when . . . why, what age do you give the poor woman, then!"

The colonel retreated to one of his defensive corners. "I am not aware that I meant to tell you anything."

Five minutes later, in the midst of the group surrounding and felicitating Victor, he had sight of Fenellan

conversing with fair ones, and it struck a light in him; he went three steps backward, with shouts. "Dam funny

fellow! eh? who is he? I must have that man at my table. Worth fifty Colonel Jackasses! And I've got a son in

the Guards: and as much laugh in him, he's got, as a bladder. But we'll make a party, eh, Radnor? with that

friend o' yours. Dam funny fellow! and precious little of it going on now among the young lot. They're for

seeing ghosts and gaping their jaws; all for the quavers instead of the capers."

He sounded and thrummed his roguish flingoff for the capers. A second glimpse of Fenellan agitated the

anecdote, as he called it, seizing Victor's arm, to have him out of earshot of the ladies. Delivery, not without

its throes, was accomplished, but imperfectly, owing to sympathetic convulsions, under which Mr. Beaves

Urmsing's countenance was crinkled of many colours, as we see the Spring rhubarbleaf. Unable to repeat

the brevity of Fenellan's rejoinder, he expatiated on it to convey it, swearing that it was "the kind of thing

done in the old days, when man were witty dogs:pat! and pat back! as in the pantomime."

"Repartee!" said Victor. "He has it. You shall know him. You're the man for him."

"He for me, that he is!`Hope the mother's doing well? My card:'eh? Grave as an owl! Look, there goes

the donkey, lady to right and left, all ears for himha! ha! I must have another turn with your friend.

`Mother lived, did she?' Dam funny fellow, all of the olden time! And a dinner, bachelor dinner, six of us, at

my place, next week, say Wednesday, halfpast six, for a long eveningflowing bowleh, shall it be?"

Mr. Beaves Urmsing grew courtly of the olden time. He spied Colonel Corfe anew, and "Donkey!" rose to

split the roar at his mouth, and full of his anecdote, he pursued some congenial acquaintances, crying to his

Plumped with the rich red stream of life, this last of the squires of old England thumped along among the

guests, a very tuningfork to keep them at their pitch of enthusiasm. He encountered Mr. Caddis, and it was

an encounter. Mr. Caddis represented his political opinions; but here was this cur of a Caddis whining his

niminy note from his piminy nob, when he was asked for his hearty echo of the praises of this jolly good

fellow come to waken the neighbourhood, to be a blessing, a blazing hearth, a fall of manna:and thank the

Lord for him, you desertdog! "He's a merchant prince, and he's a prince of a man, if you're for titles. Eh?

you `assent to my encomiums.' You'll be calling me Mr. Speaker next. Hang me, Caddis, if those

Parliamentary benches of yours aren't freezing you from your seat up, and have got to your jawmy belief!"

Mr. Caddis was left reflecting, that we have, in the dispensations of Providence, when we have a seat, to

submit to castigations from butcherly men unaccountably commissioned to solidify the seat. He could have

preached a discourse upon Success, to quiet the discontentment of the unseated. And our world of seats oddly

gained, quaintly occupied, maliciously beset, insensately envied, needs the discourse. But it was not

delivered, else would it have been here written down without mercy, as a medical prescript, one of the grand

specifics. He met Victor, and, between his dread of him and the counsels of a position subject to stripes, he

was a genial thaw. Victor beamed; for Mr. Caddis had previously stood eminent as an iceberg of the

Lakelands' party. Mr. Inchling and Mr. Caddis were introduced. The former in Commerce, the latter in

Politics, their sustaining boast was, the being our stable Englishmen; and at once, with cousinly minds, they

fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously. Colney Durance forsook a set of ladies for fatter

prey, and listened to them. What he said, Victor did not hear. The effect was always to be seen, with Inchling

Nataly played the heroine she was at heart. Why think of her as having to act a character! Twice had Carling

that afternoon, indirectly and directly, stated Mrs. Burman to be near the end we crape a natural, a defensible,

satisfaction to hear of:not wishing it:poor woman!but pardonably, before man and all the angels,

wishing, praying for the beloved one to enter into her earthly peace by the agency of the other's exit into her

"In his element! The dear old boy has the look of a gold fish, king of his globe."

I may have the summons from Themison tomorrow, Victor thought. The success of the day was a wine that

rocked the soberest of thoughts. For, strange to confess, ever since the fall on London Bridge, his heart,

influenced in some degree by Nataly's depression perhaps, had been shadowed by doubts of his infallible

instinct for success. Here, at a stroke, and before entering the house, he had the whole neighbourhood about

him: he could feel that he and Nataly stood in the minds of the worthy people variously with the brightness if

not with the warmth distinguishable in the bosom of Beaves Urmsingthe idea of whom gave Lakelands an

Armandine was thirteen minutes, by his watch, behind the time she had named. Small blame to her. He

excused her to Lady Carmine, Lady Swanage, Lady Blachington, Mrs. Fanning, Sir Abraham Quatley, Mr.

Danny (of Bacon fame) and the rest of the group surrounding Nataly on the mound leftward of the white

terraces descending to the lake; where she stood beating her foot fretfully at the word brought by Nesta, that

Dartrey Fenellan had departed. It was her sunshine departed. But she went through her task of conversing

amiably. Colney, for a wonder, consented to be useful in assisting Fenellan to relate stories of French Cooks;

which were, like the Royal Hanoverian oyster, of an age for offering acceptable flavour to English hearers.

Nesta drew her mother's attention to Priscilla Graves and Skepsey; the latter bending head and assenting.

Nataly spoke of the charm of Priscilla's voice that day, in her duet with the Rev. Septimus. Mr. Pempton

looked; he saw that Priscilla was proselytizing. She was perfection to him but for one blotting thing. With

The greater ladies of the assembly were quite ready to accuse the sections, down to the individuals, of the

Colney was apologizing for them, with his lash: "It's merely the sensible effect of a want of polish of the

Skepsey had rushed across an open space to intercept a leisurely progressive man, whose hat was of the shape

Victor knew; and the man wore the known black gaiters. In appearance, he had the likeness of a fallen

Nataly's eyes followed Victor's. "Who is the man?" she said; and she got no reply beyond a perky sparkle in

Others were noticing the man, who was trying to pass by Skepsey, now on his right side, now on his left.

He nodded scantly: "Expected, expected. I think we have our summons from Armandine. One

momentpoor soul! poor soul! Lady CarmineSir Abraham Quatley. Will you lead? Lady Blachington, I

He directed Nataly to pair a few of the guests; he hurried down the slope of sward.

Armandine's bell swung melodiously. The guests had grouped, thickening for the stream to procession. Mrs.

Blathenoy claimed Fenellan; she requested him to tell her whether he had known Mrs. Victor Radnor many

"I am sure," said she, "your brother is a chivalrous gentleman. I like her too." She came to her sentiment

through the sentiment of the chivalrous gentleman. Sinking from it, she remarked that Mr. Radnor was

handsome still. Fenellan commended the subject to her, as one to discourse of when she met Dartrey. A smell

of a traphatch halfopen, afflicted and sharpened him. It was Blathenoy's breath: husbands of young wives

do these villainies, for the sake of showing their knowledge. Fenellan forbore to praise Mrs. Victor: he laid

his colours on Dartrey. The lady gave ear till she reddened. He meant no harm, meant nothing but good; and

Visibly, that man Jarniman was disposed of with ease. As in the streettheatres of crowing Punch, distance

enlisted pantomime to do the effective part of the speeches. Jarniman's hat was off, he stood bent, he

delivered his message. He was handed over to Skepsey's care for the receiving of meat and drink. Victor

returned; he had Lady Blachington's hand on his arm; he was all hers, and in the heart of his company of

guests at the same time. Eyes that had read him closely for years, were unable to spell a definite signification

on his face, below the overflowing happiness of the hospitable man among contented guests. He had in fact

something within to enliven him; and that was the more than suspicion, amounting to an odour of certainty,

that Armandine intended one of her grand surprises for her master, and for the hundred and fifty or so to be

ARMANDINE did her wonders. There is not in the wide range of the Muses a more responsive instrument

than man to his marvellous cook; and if his notes were but as flowing as his pedals are zealous, we should be

carried on the tale of the enthusiasm she awakened, away from the rutted highroad, where History now thinks

The wonders were done: one hundred and seventy guests plenteously fed at tables across the great Concert

Hall, down a length of the conservatoryglass, on soups, fish, meats and the kitchengarden, under play of

creative sauces, all in the persuasive steam of savouriness; every dish, one may say, advancing, curtseying,

swimming to be your partner, instead of passively submitting to the eye of appetite, consenting to the teeth,

as that rather melancholy procession of the cold, resembling established spinsters thricecorseted in decorum,

will appear to do. Whether Armandine had the thought or that she simply acted in conformity with a

Frenchwoman's direct good sense, we do require to smell a sort of animation in the meats we consume. We

are still perhaps traceably related to the Adamite oldyoungster just on his legs, who betrayed at every turn

his Darwinian beginnings, and relished a palpitating unwillingness in the thing refreshing him; only we

young oldsters cherish the milder taste for willingness, with a throb of the vanquished in it. And a seeming

of that we get from the warm roast. The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke, should send out

a breath to meet us. Victor's crowded salooncarriage was one voice of eulogy, to raise Armandine high as

the finale rockets bursting over Wrensham Station at the start Londonward. How had she managed? We

Mr. Pempton was an apparent dissentient, as the man must be who is half a century ahead of his fellows in

humaneness, and saddened by the display of slaughtered herds and their devourers. He had picked out his

vegetable and farinaceous morsels, wherever he could get them uncontaminated; enough for sustenance; and

the utmost he could show was, that he did not complain. When mounted and ridden by the satirist, in wrath at

him for systematically feasting the pride of the martyr on the maceration of his animal part, he put on his

martyr's pride, which assumed a perfect contentment in the critical depreciation of opposing systems: he was

drawn to state, as he had often done, that he considered our animal part shamefully and dangerously

overnourished, and that much of the immorality of the world was due to the present excessive indulgence in

meats. "Not in drink?" Miss Graves inquired. "No," he said boldly; "not equally; meats are more insidious. I

say nothing of taking lifeof fattening for that express purpose: diseases of animals: bad blood made:

cruelty superinduced:it will be seen to be, it will be looked back on, as a form of, a second stage of,

cannibalism. Let that pass. I say, that for excess in drinking, the penalty is paid instantly, or at least on the

"Whereas intemperance in eating, corrupts constitutionally, more spiritually vitiates, we think: on the whole,

Colney lured Mr. Pempton through a quagmire of the vices to declare, that it brutalized; and stammeringly to

adopt the suggestion, that our breeding of English ladiesthose lights of the civilized worldcan hardly go

with a feeding upon flesh of beasts. Priscilla regretted that champagne should have to be pleaded in excuse of

impertinences to her sex. They were both combative, nibbed for epigram, edged to inflict wounds; and they

were set to shudder openly at one another's practices; they might have exposed to Colney which of the two

maniacal sections of his English had the vaster conceit of superiority in purity; they were baring themselves,

as it were with a garment flungoff at each retort. He reproached them for undermining their countrymen;

whose Falstaff panics demanded blood of animals to restore them; and their periods of bragging, that they

Nataly interposed. She was vexed with him. He let his eyelids drop: but the occasion for showing the

prickliness of the bristly social English, could not be resisted. Dr. Peter Yatt was tricked to confess, that small

annoyances were, in his experience, powerful on the human frame; and Dr. John Cormyn was very neatly

brought round to assure him he was mistaken if he supposed the hom*opathic doctor who smoked was

exercising a destructive influence on the efficacy of the infinitesimal doses he prescribed; Dr. Yatt chuckled a

laugh at globules; Dr. Cormyn at patients treated as horses; while Mr. Catkin was brought to praise the smoke

of tobacco as our sanctuary from the sex; and Mr. Peridon quietly denied, that the taking of it into his nostrils

from the puffs of his friend caused him sad silences. Nesta flew to protect the admirer of her beloved Louise.

Her subsiding young excitement of the day set her doating on that moony melancholy in Mr. Peridon. No one

could understand the grounds for Colney's more than usual waspishness. He trotted out the fulgent and tonal

Church of the Rev. Septimus; the skeleton of worship, so truly showing the spirit, in that of Dudley

Sowerby's family; maliciously admiring both; and he had a spar with Fenellan, ending in a snarl and a shout.

Victor said to him: "Yes, here, as much as you like, old Colney, but I tell you, you've staggered that poor

woman Lady Blachington today, and her husband too; and I don't know how many besides. What the

"Nor I," said Fenellan, "but I'll own I feel envious; like the girl among a family of boys I knew, who were all

of them starved in their infancy by a miserly father, that gave them barely a bit of Graves to eat and not a

drop of Pempton to drink; and on the afternoon of his funeral, I found them in the drawingroom, four lank

fellows, heels up, walking on their hands, from long practice; and the girl informed me, that her brothers were

able so to send the little blood they had in their bodies to their brains, and always felt quite cheerful for it,

happy, and empowered to deal with the problems of the universe; as they couldn't on their legs; but she, poor

thing, was forbidden to do the same! And I'm like her. I care for decorum too much to get the brain to act on

Colney's behaviour; but I see it enraptures him and may be comprehensible to the topsyturvey."

Victor rubbed hands. It was he who filled Colney's bag of satiric spite. In addition to the downright lunacy of

the courting of country society, by means of the cajolements witnessed this day, a suspicion that Victor was

wearing a false face over the signification of Jarniman's visit and meant to deceive the trustful and

toodevoted loving woman he seemed bound to wreck, irritated the best of his nature. He had a resolve to

pass an hour with the couple, and speak and insist on hearing plain words before the night had ended. But

Fenellan took it out of him. Victor's show of a perfect contentment emulating Pempton's, incited Colney to

some of his cunning rapierthrusts with his dancing adversary; and the heat which is planted in us for the

composition of those cool epigrams will not allow plain words to follow. Or, handing him over to the police

of the Philistines, you may put it, that a habit of assorting spices will render an earnest simplicity distasteful.

He was invited by Nataly to come home with them; her wish for his presence, besides personal, was moved

by an intuition, that his counsel might specially benefit them. He shrugged; he said he had work at his

"Work!" Victor ejaculated: he never could reach to a right comprehension of labour, in regard to the very

unremunerative occupation of literature. Colney he did not want, and he let him go, as Nataly noticed,

without a sign of the reluctance he showed when the others, including Fenellan, excused themselves.

"So! we're alone?" he said, when the door of the hall had closed on them. He kept Nesta talking of the success

of the day until she, observing her mother's look, simulated the setting in of a frenzied yawn. She was

"Well, dear, and the day was, you must own . . ." he sought to trifle with her heavy voice; but she recalled

him: "Victor!" and the naked anguish in her cry of his name was like a foreign world threatening the one he

"Ah, yes; that man, that Jarniman. You saw him, I remember. You recollected him?stouter than he was. In

her service ever since. Well, a little drop of bitter, perhaps: no harm, tonic."

"My love, don't feel at your side: she is ill, ill, not the extreme case: not yet: old and ill. I told Skepsey to give

"Curious; he made acquaintance with Skepsey, and appears to have outwitted poor Skepsey, as far as I see it.

But if that woman thinks of intimidating me now!" His eyes brightened; he had sprung from evasions.

"Living in flagrant sin, she says: you and I! She will not have it; warns me. Heard this day at noon of

company at Lakelands. Jarniman off at once. Are to live in obscurity;you and I! if together! Dictates from

"Dearest," Nataly pressed hand on her left breast, "may we not think that she may be right?"

"An outrageous tyranny of a decrepit woman naming herself wife when she is only a limpet of vitality, with

drugs for blood, hangingon to blast the healthy and vigorous! I remember old Colney's once, in old days,

calling that kind of marriage a sarcophagus. It was to me. There I laysee myself lying! wasting! Think

what you can good of her, by all means. From her bed! despatches that Jarniman to me from her bedside, with

the word, that she cannot in her conscience allow what imposition was it I practised? . . . flagrant sin?it

would have been an infinitely viler. . . . She is the cause of suffering enough: I bear no more from her; I've

come to the limit. She has heard of Lakelands: she has taken one of her hatreds to the place. She might have

written, might have sent me a gentleman, privately. No: it must be done in dramatic stylefor effect: her

confidentiallawyer?doctor?butler! Perhaps to frighten me:the boy she knew, andpoor soul! I

don't mean to abuse her: but such conduct as this is downright brutal. I laugh at it, I snap my fingers. I can

"Am I brought to listen to any of her threats!Funny thing, I'm certain that woman never can think of me

except as the boy she knew. I saw her first when she was first a widow. She would keep talking to me of the

seductions of the metropoliskept informing me I was a young man . . . shaking her head. I've told you.

Shewell, I know we are mixtures, women as well as men. I can, I hope, grant the sameI believe I

canallowances to women as to men; we are poor creatures, all of usin one sense: though I won't give

Colney his footing; there's a better way of reading us. I hold fast to Nature. No violation of Nature, my good

Colney! We can live the lives of noble creatures; and I say that happiness was meant for us:just as, when

you sit down to your dinner, you must do it cheerfully, and you make good blood: otherwise all's wrong.

There's the right answer to Colney! But when a woman like that . . . and marries a boy: well,

twentyonenot quite that: and an innocent, a positive innocentit may seem incredible, after a term of

schoollife: it was a fact: I can hardly understand it myself when I look back. Marries him! And then sets to

work to persecute him, because he has blood in his veins, because he worships beauty; because he seeks a

real marriage, a real mate. And, I say it! let the world take its own view, the world is wrong!because he

preferred a virtuous life to the kind of life she would, she mustwhy, necessarily!have driven him to,

with a mummy's grain of nature in his body. And I am made of flesh, I admit it."

"Pray, don't speak excitedly, my love," he replied to the woman whose tones had been subdued to scarce

more than waver. "You see how I meet it: water off a duck's back or Indian solar beams on the skin of a

Hindoo! I despise ithardly worth contempt;But, come: our day was a good one. Fenellan worked well.

"See the case. You have lots of courage. We can't withdraw. Her intention is mischief. I believe the woman

keeps herself alive for it: we've given her another lease!though it can only be for a very short time;

Themison is precise; Carling too. If we hold backI have great faith in Themisonthe woman's breath on

us is confirmed. We go down, then; complete the furnishing, quite leisurely; acceptlistenaccept one or

two invitations: impossible to refuse!but they are accepted!and we defy her:a crazy old creature;

imagines herself the wife of the exPremier, widow of Prince Le Boo, engaged to the Chinese Ambassador,

et c�tera. Leave the tussle with that woman to me. No, we don't repeat the error of Craye Farm and

Creckholt. And here we have stout friends. Not to speak of Beaves Urmsing: a picture of Old Christmas

England! You took to him?must have taken to Beaves Urmsing! The Marigolds! And Sir Rodwell and

Lady Blachington are altogether above the mark of Sir Humphrey and Lady Pottil, and those half and half

Mountneys. There's a warm centre of home in Lakelands. But I know my Nataly: she is thinking of our girl.

Here is the plan: We stand our ground: my dear soul won't forsake me: only there's the thought of Fredi, in

the event . . . improbable enough. I lift Fredi out of the atmosphere awhile; she goes to my cousins the

"The son inherits it. He goes to them personally. Have you ever known me personally fail? Fredi stays at

Moorsedge for a month or two. Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney will give her a taste of a new society; good

for the girl. All these little shiftings can be turned to good. Meantime, I say, we stand our ground: but you are

not to be worried; for though we have gone too far to recede, we need not and we will not make the entry into

Lakelands untilyou know: that is, auspiciously, to suit you in every way. Thus I provide to meet

contingencies. What one may really fancy is, that the woman did but threaten. There's her point of view to be

considered: silly, crazy; but one sees it. We are not sure that she struck a blow at Craye or Creckholt. I

wonder she never wrote. She was frightened, when she came to manage her property, of signing her name to

anything. Absurd, that sending of Jarniman! However, it's her move; we make a corresponding disposition of

"And I am to lose my Nesta for a month?" Nataly said, after catching here and there at the fitful gleams of

truce or comfort dropped from his words. And simultaneously, the reproach of her mind to her nature for

again and so constantly yielding to the domination of his initiativeunable to find the words, even the ideas,

to withstand him,brought big tears. Angry at herself both for the internal feebleness and the exhibition of

it, she blinked and begged excuse. There might be nothing that should call her to resist him. She could not do

much worse than she had done today. The reflection, that to day she had been actually sustained by the

expectation of a death to come, diminished her estimate of tomorrow's burden on her endurance, in making

her seem a less criminal woman, who would have no such expectation:which was virtually a stab at a

fellow creature's future. Her head was acute to work in the direction of the casuistries and the sensational

But the thought came: how could she meet those people about Lakelands, without support of the recent guilty

whispers! She said coldly, her heart shaking her: "You think there has been a recovery?"

"Invalids are up and down. They arewell, no; I should think she dreads the . . ." he kept "surgeon" out of

hearing. "Or else she means this for the final stroke: `though I'm lying here, I can still make him feel.' That,

"Certainly, dear; we will, after we have kept our engagements to dineI acceptedwith the Blathenoys, the

Nataly's vision of the peaceful lost little dairy cottage swelled to brilliance, like the large tear at the fall;

darkening under her present effort to comprehend the necessity it was for him to mix and be foremost with

the world. Unable to grasp it perfectly in mind, her compassionate love embraced it: she blamed herself, for

"Very well," she said on a sigh. "Then we shall not have to let our girl go from us?"

"Just a few weeks. In the middle of dinner, I scribbled a telegram to the Duvidneys, for Skepsey to take."

"Of my coming tomorrow. They won't stop me. I dine with them, sleep at the Wells; hotel for a night. We

She laid her hand in his and gave him a passing view of her face: "For two, dear. I am . . . that man's

visitrather shaken: I shall have a better chance of sleeping if I know I am not disturbing you."

She was firm; and they kissed and parted. Each had an unphrased speculation upon the power of Mrs.

THE maiden ladies Dorothea and Virginia Duvidney were thin sweet oldfashioned grey gentlewomen,

demurely conscious of their excellence and awake to the temptation in the consciousness, who imposed a

certain reflex primness on the lips of the world when addressing them or when alluding to them. For their

appearance was picturesque of the ancestral time, and their ideas and scrupulousness of delivery suggested

the belated in ripeness; orchard apples under a snowstorm; or any image that will ceremoniously convey the

mind's profound appreciation together with the tooth's panic dread of tartness. They were by no means tart;

only, as you know, the tooth is apprehensively nervous; an uninviting sign will set it on edge. Even the pen

which would sketch them has a spell on it and must don its coat of office, walk the liveried footman behind

Their wealth, their deeds of charity, their modesty, their built grey locks, their high repute; a "Chippendale

elegance" in a quaintly formal correctness, that they had, as Colney Durance called it; gave them some

queenliness, and allowed them to claim the ear as an oracle and banish rebellious argument. Intuitive

knowledge, assisted by the Rev. Stuart Rem and the Rev. Abram Posterley, enabled them to pronounce upon

men and things; not without effect; their country owned it; the foreigner beheld it. Nor were they corrupted

by the servility of the surrounding ear. They were good women, striving to be humbly good. They might, for

all the little errors they nightly unrolled to their perceptions, have stood before the world for a study in the

white of our humanity. And this may be but a washed wall, it is true: revolutionary sceptics are measuring the

depths of it. But the hue refreshes, the world admires; and we know it an object of aim to the bettermost of

the wealthy. If, happily, complacent circumstances have lifted us to the clean paved platform out of grip of

Possessing, for example, nine thousand pounds per annum in Consols, and not expending the whole of it

upon our luxuries, we are, without further privation, near to kindling the world's enthusiasm for whiteness.

Yet there, too, we find, that character has its problems to solve; there are shades in salt. We must be

charitable, but we should be just; we give to the poor of the land, but we are eminently the friends of our

servants; duty to mankind diverts us not from the love we bear to our dog; and with a pathetic sorrow for sin,

we discard it from sight and hearing. We hate dirt. Having said so much, having shown it, by sealing the

mouth of Mr. Stuart Rem and iceing the veins of Mr. Abram Posterley, in relation to a dreadful public case

and a melancholy private, we have a pleased sense of entry into the world's ideal.

At the same time, we protest our unworthiness. Acknowledging that they were not purely spotless, these

ladies genuinely took the tiny flyspot for a spur to purification; and they viewed it as a patch to raise in

relief their goodness. They gazed on it, saw themselves in it, and veiled it: warned of the cunning of an

To do good and sleep well, was their sowing and their reaping. Uneasy consciences could not have slept. The

sleeping served for proof of an accurate reckoning and an expunging of the day's debits. They differed in

opinion now and then, as we see companion waves of the river, blown by a gust, roll a shadow between them;

and almost equally transient were their differences with a world that they condemned when they could not

feel they (as an embodiment of their principles) were leading it. The English world at times betrayed a

restiveness in the walled pathway of virtue; for, alas, it closely neighbours the French; only a Channel, often

dangerously smooth, to divide: but it is not perverted for long; and the English Funds are always constant and

Colney Durance was acquainted with the Duvidney ladies. Hearing of the journey to them and the purport of

it, he said, with the mask upon glee: "Then Victor has met his match!" Nataly had sent for him to dine with

her in Victor's absence: she was far from grieved, as to the result, by his assurance to her, that Victor had not

a chance. Colney thought so. "Just like him! to be off gaily to try and overcome or come over the greatest

power in England." They were England herself; the squat old woman she has become by reason of her

overlapping numbers of the comfortable fundholder annuitants: a vast body of passives and negatives, living

by precept, according to rules of precedent, and supposing themselves to be righteously guided because of

their continuing undisturbed. Them he branded, as hypocritical materialists, and the country for pride in her

sweetmeat plethora of them:mixed with an ancient Hebrew fear of offence to an inscrutable Lord,

eccentrically appeasable through the dreary iteration of the litany of sinfulness. He was near a truth; and he

Satirists in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if they could be moved to moral distinctness, mental

intention, with a preference of strong plain speech over the crack of their whips. Colney could not or would

not praise our modern adventurous, experimental, heroic, tramping active, as opposed to yonder pursy

passives and negatives; he had occasions for flicking the fellow sharply: and to speak of the Lord as our

friend present with us, palpable to Reason, perceptible to natural piety solely through the reason, which

justifies punishment; that would have stopped his mouth upon the theme of Godforsaken creatures. Our

satirist is an executioner by profession, a moralist in excuse, or at the tail of it; though he thinks the position

reversed, when he moralizes angrily to have his angry use of the scourge condoned. Nevertheless, he fills a

serviceable place; and certainly he is not happy in his business. Colney suffered as heavily as he struck. If he

had been no more than a mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked compensation from the acid of

He dramatized to Nataly some of the scene going on at the Wells: Victor's petition; his fugue in urgency of it;

the brief reply of Miss Dorothea and her muted echo Miss Virginia. He was rather their apologist for

refusing. But, as when, after himself listening to their `views,' he had deferentially withdrawn from the ladies

of Moorsedge, and had then beheld their strangely hatted lieutenants and the regiments of the toneless

respectable on the pantiles and the mounts, the curse upon the satirist impelled him to generalize. The quiet

good ladies were multiplied: they were "the thousands of their sisters, petticoated or longcoated or

buckskinned; comfortable annuitants under clerical shepherding, close upon outnumbering the labourers

they paralyze at home and stultify abroad." Colney thumped away. The country's annuitants had for type "the

figure with the helmet of the OwlGoddess and the trident of the Earthshaker, seated on a wheel, at the back

of penny pieces; in whom you see neither the beauty of nakedness nor the charm of drapery; not the

helmet's dignity or the trident's power; but she has patently that which stops the wheel; and posing for

representative of an imperial nation, she helps to pass a penny." So he passed his epigram, heedless of the

understanding or attention of his hearer; who temporarily misjudged him for a man impelled by the vanity of

literary point and finish, when indeed it was hot satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a class to

extract a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the country, mankind as well. Nataly wanted a picture

painted, colours and details, that she might get a vision of the scene at Moorsedge. She did her best to feel an

omen and sound it, in his question "whether the yearly increasing army of the orderly annuitants and their

parasites does not demonstrate the proud old country as a sheath for pith rather than of the vital run of sap."

Perhaps it was patriotic to inquire; and doubtless she was the weakest of women; she could follow no

thought; her heart was beating blindly beside Victor, hoping for the refusal painful to her through his

"You think me foolish," she made answer to one of Colney's shrugs; "and it has come to that pitch with me,

that I cannot be sensible of a merit except in being one with himobeying, is the word. And I have never yet

known him fail. That terrible Lakelands wears a different look to me, when I think of what he can do; though

She harped on the chord of feverish extravagance; the more hateful to Colney because of his perceiving, that

she simulated a blind devotedness to stupefy her natural pride; and he was divided between stamping on her

for an imbecile and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation rendered her pitiable. "You will learn

tomorrow what Victor has done," he said, and thought how the simple words carried the bitterness.

That was uttered within a few minutes of midnight, when the ladies of Moorsedge themselves, after an

exhausting resistance to their dearest relative, were at the halldoor of the house with Victor, saying the

goodnight, to which he responded hurriedly, cordially, dumbly, a baffled man. They clasped hands. Miss

Dorothea said: "You, Victor, always." Miss Virginia said: "You will be sure of welcome." He walked out

upon the moonless night; and for lack of any rounded object in the smothering darkness to look at, he could

nowhere take moorings to gather himself together and define the man who had undergone so portentous a

defeat. He was glad of quarters at an hotel, a solitary bed, absence from his Nataly.

For their parts, the ladies were not less shattered. They had no triumph in their victory: the weight of it bore

them down. They closed, locked, shot the bolts and fastened the chain of the door. They had to be reminded

by the shaking of their darling dog Tasso's curly silky coat, that he had not taken his evening trot to notify

malefactors of his watchfulness and official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one. Without consultation,

they unbolted the door, and Tasso went forth, to "compose his vesper hymn," as Mr. Posterley once remarked

amusingly. Though not pretending to the Muse's crown so far, the little dog had qualities to entrance the

spinster sex. His mistresses talked of him; of his readiness to go forth; of the audible first line of his hymn or

sonnet; of his instinct telling him that something was wrong in the establishment. For most of the servants at

Moorsedge were prostrated by a fashionable epidemic; a slight attack, the doctor said; but Montague, the

butler, had withdrawn for the nursing of his wife; Perrin, the footman, was confined to his chamber; Manton,

the favourite maid, had appeared in the morning with a face that caused her banishment to bed; and the cook,

Mrs. Bannister, then sighingly agreed to send up cold meat for the ladies' dinner. Hence their melancholy

inhospitality to their cousin Victor, who had, in spite of his errors, the right to claim his place at their table,

was "of the blood," they said. He was recognized as the living prince of it. His every gesture, every word,

recalled the General. The trying scene with him had withered them, they did not speak of it; each had to the

other the look of a vessel that has come out of a gale. Would they sleep? They scarcely dared ask it of

themselves. They had done rightly; silence upon that reflection seemed best. It was the silence of an inward

Tasso was usually timed for five minutes. They were astonished to discover by the clock, that they had given

him ten. He was very quiet: if so, and for whatever he did, he had his reason, they said: he was a dog

endowed with reason; endowed and how they wished that Mr. Stuart Rem would admit it! with, their

love of the little dog believed (and Mr. Posterley acquiesced), a soul. Do but think it of dear animals, and any

form of cruelty to them becomes an impossibility, Mr. Stuart Rem! But he would not be convinced:

ungenerously indeed he named Mr. Posterley a courtier. The ladies could have retorted, that Mr. Posterley

Usually Tasso came running in when the halldoor was opened to him. Not a sound of him could be heard.

The ladies blew his familiar whistle. He trotted back to a third appeal, and was, unfortunately for them, not

caressed; he received reproaches from two forefingers directed straight at his reason. He saw it and felt it.

The hug of him was deferred to the tender good night to him in his basket at the foot of the ladies' beds.

On entering their spacious bedchamber, they were so fatigued that sleep appeared to their minds the

compensating logical deduction. Miss Dorothea suppressed a yawn, and inflicted it upon Miss Virginia, who

returned it, with an apology, and immediately had her sister's hand on her shoulder, for an attempted control

of one of the irresistibles; a spectacle imparting bitter shudders and shots to the sympathetic jawbones of an

observer. Hand at mouth, for not in privacy would they have been guilty of exposing a grimace, they

signified, under an interim smile, their maidenly submission to the ridiculous force of nature: after which,

Miss Virginia retired to the dressingroom, absorbed in woeful recollection of the resolute No they had been

compelled to reiterate, in response to the most eloquent and, saving for a single instance, admirable man, their

cousin, the representative of `the blood,' supplicating them. A recreant thankfulness coiled within her bosom

at the thought, that Dorothea, true to her office of speaker, had tasked herself with the cruel utterance and

repetition of the word. Victor's wonderful eyes, his voice, yet more than his urgent pleas; and also, in the

midst of his fiery flood of speech, his gentleness, his patience, pathos, and a man's tone through it all; were

"I have called to you twice," Dorothea said; and she looked a motive for the call.

"What is it?" said Virginia, with faltering sweetness, with a terrible divination.

Virginia was taken with the contrary movement of a sniff. But the fear informing it prevented it from being

venturesome. Doubt of the pure atmosphere of their bedchamber, appeared to her as too heretic even for the

positive essay. In affirming, that she was not aware of anything, her sight fell on Tasso. His eyeballs were

"It is more than a suspicion," said Dorothea; and plainly now, while open to the seductions of any pleasing

Virginia's nose was lowered a few inches; it inhaled and stopped midway. "You must be mistaken, dear. He

Virginia dismissed the forlornest of efforts at incredulity. A whiff of Tasso had smitten her. "Ah!" she

exclaimed and fell away. "Is it Tasso! How was it you noticed nothing before undressing, dear?"

"Thinking of what we have gone through tonight! I forgot him. At last the very strange. . . . The like of it I

have not ever! . . . And upon that thick coat! And, dear, it is late. We are in the morning hours."

That was the crucial point for discussion. They had no servant to give them aid; Manton, they could not

dream of disturbing. And Tasso's character was in the estimate; he hated washing; it balefully depraved his

temper; and not only, creature of habit that he was, would he decline to lie down anywhere save in their

bedroom, he would lament, plead, insist unremittingly, if excluded; terrifying every poor invalid of the house.

Then again, were they at this late hour to dress themselves, and take him downstairs, and light a fire in the

kitchen, and boil sufficient water to give him a bath and scrubbing? Cold water would be death to him.

Besides, he would ring out his alarum for the house to hear, pour out all his poetry, poor dear, as Mr.

Posterley called it, at a touch of cold water. The catastrophe was one to weep over, the dilemma a trial of the

In addition to reviews of their solitary alternativethe having of a befouled degraded little dog in their

chamber through the night, they were subjected to a conflict of emotions when eyeing him: and there came to

them the painful, perhaps irreverent, perhaps uncharitable, thought:that the sinner who has rolled in the

abominable, must cleanse him and do things to polish him and perfume before again being embraced even by

the mind: if indeed we can ever have our old sentiment for him again! Mr. Stuart Rem might decide it for

them. Nay, before even the heart embraces him, he must completely purify himself. That is to say, the

ordinary human sinnersave when a relative. Contemplating Tasso, the hearts of the ladies gushed out in

pity of an innocent little dog, knowing not evil, dependent on his friends for help to be purified;necessarily

kept at a distance: the very look of him prescribed extreme separation, as far as practicable. But they had

proof of a love almost greater than it was previous to the offence, in the tender precautions they took to elude

He was rolling on the rug, communicating contagion. Flasks of trebledistilled lavender water, and their

favourite, traditional in the family, eau d'Arquebusade, were on the toilettable. They sprinkled his basket,

liberally sprinkled the rug and the little dog. Perfumepastilles were in one of the sittingrooms below; and

Virginia would have gone down softly to fetch a box, but Dorothea restrained her, in pity for the servants,

with the remark: "It would give us a nightmare of a Roman Catholic Cathedral!" A bit of the window was

lifted by Dorothea, cautiously, that prowling outsiders might not be attracted. Tasso was wooed to his basket.

He seemed inquisitive; the antidote of his naughtiness excited him; his tail circled after his muzzle several

times; then he lay. A silken scarf steeped in eau d'Arquebusade was flung across him.

Their customary devout observances concluded, lights were extinguished, and the ladies kissed, and entered

their beds. Their beds were not homely to them. Dorothea thought that Virginia was long in settling herself.

Virginia did not like the sound of Dorothea's double sigh. Both listened anxiously for the doings of Tasso. He

He was uneasy; he was rounding his basket once more; unaware of the exaggeration of his iniquitous

conduct, poor innocent, he shook that dreadful coat of his! He had displaced the prophylactic cover of the

He drove them in a despair to speculate on the contention between the perfume and the stench in junction,

with such a doubt of the victory of which of the two, as drags us to fear our worst. It steals into our nostrils,

possesses them. As the History of Mankind has informed us, we were led up to our civilization by the nose.

But Philosophy warns us on that eminence, to beware of trusting exclusively to our conductor, lest the mind

of us at least be plunged back into barbarism. The ladies hated both the cause and the consequence, they had

a revulsion from the object, of the above contention. But call it not a contention: there is nobility in that. This

was a compromise, a degrading union, with very sickening results. Whether they came of an excess of the

sprinkling, could not well be guessed. The drenching at least was righteously intended.

Beneath their shut eyelids, they felt more and more the oppression of a darkness not laden with slumber.

They saw it in solidity; themselves as restless billows, driven dashing to the despondent sigh. Sleep was

Tasso slept. He had sinned unknowingly, and that is not a spiritual sin; the chastisement confers the pardon.

But why was this ineffable blessing denied to them? Was it that they might have a survey of all the day's

Silence courted slumber. Their interchange of speech from the posture of bodies on their backs, had been low

and deliberate, in the tone of the vaults. Dead silence recalled the strangeness of it. The night was breathless;

their open window a peril bestowing no boon. They were mutually haunted by sound of the gloomy query at

the nostrils of each when drawing the vital breath. But for that, they thought they might have slept.

Again they lay as tombstone effigies, that have committed the passage of affairs to another procession of the

There was a gentle sniff, in hopeless confirmation of the experience of its predecessors. A sister to it ensued.

"Could Victor have spoken so, without assurance in his conscience, that his entreaty was righteously

No more than three of the clock, it was the voice telling of half the precious restorative nighthours wasted.

Now, as we close our eyelids when we would go to sleep, so must we, in expectation of the peace of mind

granting us the sweet oblivion, preliminarily do something which invokes, that we may obtain it.

"Indeed not. But harsh it may be named, if the one innocent is to be the sufferer."

They had the happier feeling of composure, though Tasso possessed the room. Not Tasso, but a sublimated

offensiveness, issue of the antagonistically combined, dispersed to be the more penetrating; insomuch that it

seemed to them they could not ever again make use of eau d'Arquebusade without the vitiating reminder. So

true were the words of Mr. Stuart Rem: `Half measures to purification are the most delusive of our artifices.'

Fatigue and its reflections helped to be peacefuller. Their souls were mounting to a serenity above the

Both sighed as they tookup the burden of the vaporous Tasso to drop him; with the greater satisfaction in

"It might be said, dear, that concession to his entreaty does not in any way countenance the sin."

"He used the words: `her serious respect' for us. I should not wish to listen to him often."

"If, dear, in truth the father's look is in the child, he has the greater reason to desire for her a taste of our

"Your mention of our atmosphere, dear, destroys my power to frame one. Do you, for two. But I would

Virginia spoke a more fervent word of praise of her sister, and had not the hushing response to it. She heard

the soft regular breathing. Her own was in downy fellowship with it a moment later.

At the hour of nine, in genial daylight, sitting over the crumbs of his hotel breakfast, Victor received a little

"Dear Victor, we are prepared to receive the child for a month. In haste, before your train. Our love. D. and

A more precious document had never been handed to him. It chased back to midnight the doubt hovering

over his belief in himself;phrased to say, that he was no longer the Victor Radnor known to the world. And

it extinguished a corpselight recollection of a baleful dream in the night. Here shone radiant witness of his

being the very man; save for the spot of his recent confusion in distinguishing his identity or in feeling that he

stood whole and solid.Because of two mature maiden ladies? Yes, because of two maiden ladies, my good

fellow. And friend Colney, you know the ladies, and what the getting round them for one's purposes really

The sprite of Colney Durance had struck him smartly overnight. Victor's internal crow was over Colney now.

And when you have the optimist and pessimist acutely opposed in a mixing group, they direct lively

conversations at one another across the gulf of distance, even of time. For a principle is involved, besides the

knowledge of the other's triumph or dismay. The couple are scales of a balance; and not before last night had

Victor ever consented to think of Colney ascending while he dropped low to graze the pebbles.

He left his hotel for the station, singing the great aria of the fourth Act of the Favorita: neglected since that

mighty German with his Rienzi, and Tannh�user, and Tristan and Isolda, had mastered him, to the

displacement of his boyhood's beloved sugary inis and antes and zettis; had clearly mastered, not

beguiled, him; had wafted him up to a new realm, invigorating if severer. But now his youth would have its

voice. He travelled up to town with Sir Abraham Quatley, and talked, and took and gave hints upon City and

Commercial affairs, while the honeyed Italian of the conventional, gloriously animal, stress and flutter had a

revel in his veins, now and then mutedly ebullient at the mouth: honeyed, golden, rich in visions;having

A WORD in his ear from Fenellan, touching that man Blathenoy, set the wheels of Victor's brain at work

upon his defences, for a minute, on the walk Westward. Who knew?who did not know! He had a torpid

consciousness that he cringed to the world, with an entreaty to the great monster to hold off in ignorance; and

the next instant, he had caught its miserable spies by the lurcher neck and was towering. He dwelt on his

Fenellan, with the usual apologetic moderation of a second statement, thought "there was the look of it."

"Well, we must watch over her. Dartrey!but Dartrey's an honest fellow with women. But men are men.

Very few men spare a woman when the mad fit is on her. A little womanpretty little woman!wife to

Jacob Blathenoy! She mustn't at her age have any close choosingunder her hand. And Dartrey's just the

"He spent his honeymoon at his place at Wrensham; told me so." Blathenoy had therefore then heard of the

building of Lakelands by the Victor Radnor of the City; and had then, we guessin the usual honeymoon

boasting of a windbag with his bridewheezed the foul gossip, to hide his emptiness and do duty for

amusement of the pretty little caged bird. Probably so. But Victor knew that Blathenoy needed him and

feared him. Probably the wife had been enjoined to keep silence; for the Blachingtons, Fannings and others

were, it could be sworn, blank and unscratched folio sheets on the subject:as yet; unless Mrs. Burman had

"Dartrey won't be back for a week or so; and they're off to Switzerland, after the dinner they give. I heard

"Lucky. But wherever Blathenoy takes her, he must be the same `arid bore,' as old Colney says."

"Awful thing, marriage, to some women! We chain them to that domestic round; most of them haven't the

means of independence or a chance of winning it; and all that's open to them, if they've made a bad cast for a

mateand good Lord! how are they to know before it's too late!they haven't a choice except to play tricks

or jump to the deuce or sit and `drape in blight,' as Colney has it; though his notion of the optional marriages,

broken or renewed every seven years!if he means it. You never know, with him, It sounds like another

"Come, come read your Scriptures; donkeys have shown wisdom," Victor said, rather leaning to the theme of

a fretfulness of women in the legal yoke. "They're donkeys till we know them for prophets. Who can tell!

Fenellan was not invited to enter the house, although the loneliness of his lodgings was known, and also, that

he played whist at his Club. Victor had grounds for turning to him at the door and squeezing his hand

warmly, by way of dismissal. In ascribing them to a weariness at Fenellan's perpetual acquiescence, he put

the cover on them, and he stamped it with a repudiation of the charge, that Colney's views upon the great

Marriage Question were the `very heehaw of nonsense.' They were not the heehaw; in fact, viewing the

host of marriages, they were for discussion; there was no bray about them. He could not feel them to be

absurd while Mrs. Burman's tenure of existence barred the ceremony. Anything for a phrase! he murmured of

Nataly had not seen Fenellan or heard from Dartrey; so she continued to be uninformed of her hero's release;

and that was in the order of happy accidents. She had hardly to look her interrogation for the news: it

radiated. But he stated such matterofcourse briefly. "The good ladies are ready to receive our girl."

Her chagrin resolved to a kind of solace of her draggled pride, in the idea, that he who tamed everybody to

There stood the words. And last night she had been partly of the opinion of Colney Durance. She sank down

among the unreasoning abject;not this time with her perfect love of him, but with a resistance and a

dubiety under compression. For she had not quite comprehended why Nesta should go. This readiness of the

She begged for a week's delay; "before the parting;" as her dear old silly mother's pathos whimpered it, of the

separation for a month! and he smiled and hummed pleasantly at any small petition, thinking her in error to

expect Dartrey's return to town before the close of a week: and then wondering at women, mildly denouncing

in his heart the mothers who ran risk of disturbing their daughters' bosoms with regard to particular heroes

married or not. Dartrey attracted women: he was one of the men who do it without effort. Victor's provident

mind blamed the mother for the indiscreetness of her wish to have him among them. But Dudley had been

making way bravely of late; he improved; he began to bloom, like a Spring flower of the garden protected

from frosts under glass; and Fredi was the sheltering and nourishing bestower of the lessons. One could see,

his questions and other little points revealed, that he had a certain lover's dread of Dartrey Fenellan; a sort of

jealousy: Victor understood the feeling. To love a girl, who has her ideal of a man elsewhere in another;

though she may know she never can wed the man, and has not the hope of it; is torment to the lover quailing,

as we do in this terrible season of the priceless deliciousness, stripped against all the winds that blow;

skinless at times. One gets up a sympathy for the poor shy dependent shivering lover. Nevertheless, here was

young Dudley waking, visibly becoming bolder. As in the fluteduets, he gained fire from concert. The

Instead of the delay of a whole week, Victor granted four days, which embraced a musical evening at Mrs.

John Cormyn's on the last of the days, when Nesta was engaged to sing with her mother a duet of her own

composition, the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from rigid Herr Str�uscher, who had said

what he had said, in letting it pass: eulogy, coming from him. So Victor heard, and he doated on the surprise

to come for him, in a boyish anticipation. The girl's little French ballads under tutelage of Louise de Seilles

promised, though they were imitative. If Str�uscher let this pass . . . Victor saw Grand Opera somewhere to

follow; England's claim to be a creative musical nation vindicated; and the genius of the fair sex as well.

He heard the duet at Mrs. Cormyn's; and he imagined a hearing of his Fredi's Opera, and her godmother's

delight in it; the oncefamed Sanfredini's consent to be the diva at a rehearsal, and then her compelling her

hidalgo duque to consent further: an event not inconceivable. For here was downright genius; the flowering

aloe of the many years in formation; and Colney admitted the song to have a streak of genius; though he

would pettishly and stupidly say, that our modern newspaper Press is able now to force genius for us twenty

or so to the month, excluding Sundaysour short pauses for the incubation of it. Real rare genius was in that

song, nothing forced; and exquisite melody; one of those melodies which fling gold chains about us and lead

us off, lead us back into Eden. Victor hummed at bars of it on the drive homeward. His darlings had to sing it

again in the halflighted drawingroom. The bubblehappiness of the three was vexed only by tidings heard

from Colney during the evening of a renewed instance of Skepsey's misconduct. Priscilla Graves had hurried

away to him at the close of Mr. John Cormyn's Concert, in consequence; in grief and in sympathy. Skepsey

was to appear before the magistrate next morning, for having administered physical chastisement to his wife

during one of her fits of drunkenness. Colney had seen him. His version of the story was given, however, in

the objectionable humorous manner: none could gather from it what might be pleaded for Skepsey. His

`lesson to his wife in the art of pugilism, before granting her Captain's rank among the Defensive Amazons of

Old England,' was the customary patent absurdity. But it was odd, that Skepsey always preferred his appeal

for help to Colney Durance. Nesta proposed following Priscilla that night. She had hinted her wish, on the

way home; she was urgent, beseeching, when her father lifted praises of her: she had to start with her father

by the train at seven in the morning, and she could not hear of poor Skepsey for a number of hours. She

begged a day's delay; which would enable her, she said, to join them in dining at the Blachington's, and

seeing dear Lakelands again. "I was invited, you know." She spoke in childish style, and under her eyes she

beheld her father and mother exchange looks. He had a fear that Nataly might support the girl's petition.

Nataly read him to mean, possible dangers among the people at Wrensham. She had seemed hesitating. After

meeting Victor's look, her negative was firm. She tried to make it one of distress for the use of the negative to

But what was it? There was a reason for her going! She had a right to stay, and see and talk with Captain

So now she set herself to remember little incidents at Creckholt: particularly a conversation in a very young

girl's hearing, upon Sir Humphrey and Lady Pottil's behaviour to the speakers, her parents. She had then, and

she now had, an extraordinary feeling, as from a wind striking upon soft summer weather off regions of ice,

that she was in her parents' way. How? The feeling was irrational; it could give her no reply, or only the

She and her father breakfasted by the London birds' first twitter. They talked of Skepsey. She spoke of her

Her cheeks glowed. It came wholly through the suddenness of the recollection, that the familyseat of one

He was allowed to fancy, as it suited him to fancy, that a vivid secret pleasure laid the colour on those

"A solitary flute for me, for a month! I shall miss my sober comrade: got the habit of duetting: and he's

Tears lined her eyelids. "Who would not be, dearest dada! But there is nothing to bear except the honour."

Now there was a reddening of the sun at the mount; all the sky aflame. How could he know that it was not the

heart in the face! She reddened because she had perused his wishes; had detected a scheme striking off from

them, and knew a man to be the object of it; and because she had at the same time the sense of a flattery in

her quick divination; and she was responsively emotional, her blood virginal; often it was a tropical lightning.

It looked like the heart doing rich painter's work on maiden features. Victor was naturally as deceived as he

From his being naturally so, his remarks on Dudley had an air of embracing him as one of the family. "His

Her father let his tongue run: "One of the few young men I feel perfectly at home with! I do like dealing with

a gentleman. I can confide in a gentleman: honour, heart, whatever I hold dearest."

There he stopped, not too soon. The girl was mute, fully agreeing, slightly hardening. She had a painful sense

of separation from her dear Louise. And it was now to be from her mother as well: she felt the pain when

kissing her mother in bed. But this was moderated by the prospect of a holiday away out of reach of Mr.

Barmby's pursuing voice, whom her mother favoured: and her mother was concealing something from her; so

she could not make the confidante of her mother. Nataly had no forewarnings. Her simple regrets filled her

bosom. All night she had been taking her chastisement, and in the morning it seemed good to her, that she

For some reason, over which Nataly mused in the succeeding hours, the girl had not spoken of any visit her

mother was to pay to the Duvidney ladies or they to her. Latterly she had not alluded to her mother's family.

It might mean, that the beloved and dreaded was laying finger on a dark thing in the dark; reading syllables

by touch; keeping silence over the communications to a mind not yet actively speculative, as it is a way with

young women. "With young women educated for the market, to be timorous, consequently secretive, rather

snaky," Colney Durance had said. Her Nesta was not one of the "framed and glazed" description, cited by

him, for an example of the triumph of the product; "exactly harmonious with the ninny male's ideal of female

innocence." No; but what if the mother had opened her heart to her girl? It had been of late her wish or a

dream, shaping hourly to a design, now positively to go through that furnace. Her knowledge of Victor's

objection, restrained an impulse that had not won spring enough to act against his counsel or vivify an

intelligence grown dull in slavery under him, with regard to the one seeming right course. The adoption of it

would have wounded himtherefore her. She had thought of him first; she had also thought of herself, and

she blamed herself now. She went so far as to think, that Victor was guilty of the schemer's error of counting

human creatures arithmetically, in the sum, without the estimate of distinctive qualities and value here and

there. His return to a shivering sensitiveness on the subject of his girl's enlightenment "just yet," for which

Nataly pitied and loved him, sharing it, with humiliation for doing so, became finally her excuse. We must

Skepsey's case appeared in the evening papers. He confessed, "frankly," he said, to the magistrate, that,

"acting under temporary exasperation, he had lost for a moment a man's proper selfcommand." He was as

frank in stating, that he "occupied the prisoner's place before his Worship a second time, and was a second

time indebted to the gentleman, Mr. Colney Durance, who so kindly stood by him." There was hilarity in the

Court at his quaint sententious envelopment of the idiom of the streets, which he delivered with solemnity:

"He could only plead, not in absolute justificationan appeal to human sentimentsthe feelings of a man of

the humbler orders, returning home in the evening, and his thoughts upon things not without their

importance, to find repeatedly the guardian of his household beastly drunk, and destructive." Colney made

the case quite intelligible to the magistrate; who gravely robed a strain of the idiomatic in the officially awful,

to keep in tune with his delinquent. No serious harm had been done to the woman. Skepsey was admonished

and released. His wife expressed her willingness to forgive him, now he had got his lesson; and she hoped he

would understand, that there was no need for a woman to learn pugilism. Skepsey would have explained; but

the case was over, he was hustled out. However, a keen young reporter present smelt fun for copy; he

followed the couple; and in a particular evening Journal, laughable matter was printed concerning Skepsey's

view of the pugilism to be imparted to women for their physical protection in extremity, and the distinction of

it from the blow conveying the moral lesson to them; his wife having objected to the former, because it

annoyed her and he pestered her; and she was never, she said, ready to stand up to him for practice, as he

called it, except when she had taken more than he thought wholesome for her: he had no sense. There was

a squabble between them, because he chose to scour away to his master's office instead of conducting her

home with the honours. Nesta read the young reporter's version, with shrieks. She led the ladies of

At first, as her letter to her mother described them, they were like a pair of pieces of costly China, with the

settled smile, and cold. She saw but the outside of them, and she continued reporting the variations, which

steadily determined to warmth. On the night of the third day, they kissed her tenderly; they were human

No one could be aware of the trial undergone by the good ladies in receiving her: Victor's child; but, as their

phrase would have run, had they dared to give it utterance to one another, a child of sin. How foreign to them,

in that character; how strange, when she was looked on as an inhabitant of their house; they hardly dared to

estimate; until the timorous estimation, from gradually swelling, suddenly sank; nature invaded them; they

could discard the alienating sense of the taint; and not only did they no longer fear the moment when Mr.

Stuart Rem or Mr. Posterley might call for evening tea, but they consulted upon inviting the married one of

those gentlemen, "to divert dear Nesta." Every night she slept well. In all she did, she proved she was `of the

blood.' She had Victor's animated eyes; she might have, they dreaded to think, his eloquence. They put it

down to his eloquence entirely, that their resistance to his petition had been overcome, for similarly with the

treatment of the private acts of royal personages by lacquey History, there is, in the minds of the

ultracivilized, an insistence, that any event having a consequence in matters personal to them, be at all

hazards recorded with the utmost nicety in decency. By such means, they preserve the ceremonial

selfrespect, which is a necessity of their existence; and so they maintain the regal elevation over the

awestruck subjects of their interiors; who might otherwise revolt, pull down, scatter, dishonour, expose for a

shallow fiction the holiest, the most vital to them. A democratic evil spirit is abroad, generated among

congregations, often perilously communicating its wanton laughter to the desperate wickedness they know

(not solely through the monition of Mr. Stuart Rem) to lurk within. It has to be excluded: on certain points

they must not think. The night of Tasso was darkly clouded in the minds of the pure ladies: a rift would have

seized their halfslumbering sense of smell, to revive the night, perhaps disorder the stately march of their

Victor's eloquence, Victor's influence, Victor's child: he carried them as a floodstream, insomuch, that their

reception of this young creature of the blot on her birth, was regarded by them in the unmentioned abstract,

and the child's presence upon earth seen with the indulgence (without the naughty curiosity) of the loyal

moral English for the numerous offspring of the peccadillos of their monarchs. These things pass muster from

being "Britannically cocooned in the Purple," says our irreverent satirist; and the maiden ladies' passion of

devotion to `the blood' helped to blind them; but still more so did the imperious urgency to curtain closely the

night of Tasso, throwing all its consequences upon Victor's masterful tongue. Whence it ensued (and here is

the danger for illogical individuals as well as vast communities, who continue to batten upon fiction when the

convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that they had need to exalt his eloquence, for a cloak to

their conduct; and doing it, they fell into a habit of yielding to him; they disintegrated under him; rules,

principles, morality, were shaken to some confusion. And still proceeding thus, they now and then glanced

back, more wonderingly than convicted sinners upon their days of early innocence, at the night when

successfully they withstood him. They who had doubted of the rightness of letting Victor's girl come into

collision with two clerical gentlemen, one of whom was married, permitted him now to bring the Hon.

Dudley Sowerby to their house, and make appointments to meet Mr. Dudley Sowerby under a roof that

sheltered a young lady, evidently the allurement to the scion of aristocracy; of whose family Mr. Stuart Rem

had spoken in the very kindling hushed tones, proper to the union of a sacerdotal and an English citizen's

How would it end? And if some day this excellent Mr. Dudley Sowerby reproached them! He could not have

a sweeter bride, one more truly a lady in education and manners; but the birth! the child's name! Their trouble

was emitted in a vapour of interjections. Very perplexing was it for the good ladies of strict principles to

reflect, as dimly they did, that the concrete presence of dear Nesta silenced and overcame objections to her

being upon earth. She seemed, as it were, a draught of redoubtable Nature inebriating morality. But would

others be similarly affected? Victor might get his release, to do justice to the mother: it would not cover the

child. Prize as they might the quality of the Radnor blood (drawn from the most ancient of original Britain's

princes), there was also the Cantor blood for consideration; and it was old, noble, proud. Would it be satisfied

in matching itself with great wealth, a radiant health, and the good looks of a young flower? For the sake of

the dear girl, the ladies hoped that it would; and they enlarged the outline of their wedding present, while, in

their minds, the noble English family which could be satisfied so, was lowered, partaking of the taint they

Of one thing they were sure, and it enlisted them: the gentleman loved the girl. Her love of him, had it been

prominent to view, would have stirred a feminine sigh, not more, except a feminine lecture to follow. She

was quite uninflamed, fresh and cool as a spring. His ardour had no disguise. They measured him by the

favourite fiction's heroes of their youth, and found him to gaze, talk, comport himself, according to the

prescription; correct grammar, finished sentences, all that is expected of a gentleman enamoured; and ever

with the watchful intentness for his lady's faintest first dawn of an inclining to a wish. Mr. Dudley Sowerby's

eye upon Nesta was really an apprentice. There is in Love's young season a magnanimity in the male kind.

Their superior strength and knowledge are made subservient to the distaff of the weaker and shallower: they

crown her queen; her look is their mandate. So was it when Sir Charles and Sir Rupert and the estimable

Villiers Davenant touched maidenly hearts to throb: so is it now, with the Hon. Dudley Sowerby.

Very haltingly, the ladies were guilty of a suggestion to Victor. "Oh! Fredi?" said he; "admires her, no doubt;

and so do I, so we all do; she's one of the nice girls; but as to Cupid's darts, she belongs to the cucumber

family, and he shoots without firing. We shall do the mischief if we put an interdict. Don't you remember the

green days when obstacles were the friction to light that match?" Their pretty nod of assent displayed the

virgin pride of the remembrance: they dreamed of having once been exceedingly wilful; it refreshed their

nipped natures; and dwelling on it, they forgot to press their suggestion. Incidentally, he named the sum his

Fredi would convey to her husband; with, as was calculable, the further amount his only child would inherit.

A curious effect was produced on them. Though they were not imaginatively mercenary, as the creatures

tainted with wealth commonly are, they talked of the sum over and over in the solitude of their chamber.

"Dukes have married for less." Such an heiress, they said, might buy up a Principality. Victor had supplied

them with something of an apology to the gentleman proposing to Nesta in their house.

The chronicle of it is, that Dudley Sowerby did this on the fifteenth day of September; and that it was not

known to the damsel's parents before the twentythird; as they were away on an excursion in South

Tyrol:away, flown, with just a word of the hurried departure to their envious, exiled girl; though they did

not tell her of new constructions at the London house partly causing them to fly. Subject to their consent, she

wrote, she had given hers. The letter was telegrammic on the essential point. She wrote of Mr. Barmby's

having visited Mr. Posterley at the Wells, and she put it just as flatly. Her principal concern, to judge by her

writing, was, to know what Mr. Durance had done, during her absence, with the group of emissaryadvocates

of the various tongues of Europe on board the steamLiner conducting them the first stage of their journey to

the Court of Japan. Mr. Simeon Fenellan had written his opinion, that all these delegates of the different

European nationalities were nothing other than dupes of a NewYork Syndicate of American Humorists, not

without an eye on the main chance; and he was sure they would be set to debate publicly, before an audience

of highpriced tickets, in the principal North American Cities, previous to the embarcation for Japan at San

Francisco. Mr. Fenellan eulogized the immense astuteness of Dr. Gannius in taking his daughter Delphica

with him. Dr. Gannius had singled forth poor Dr. Bouthoin for the object of his attacks; but Nesta was chiefly

anxious to hear of Delphica's proceedings; she was immensely interested in Delphica, and envied her; and the

girl's funny speculations over the play of Delphica's divers arts upon the Greek, and upon the Russian, and

upon the English curate Mr. Semhians, and upon M. Falariqueset Gallically pluming and crowing out of an

Nataly received it at Campiglio, when about to start for an excursion down the Sarca Valley to Arco. Her

letter of reply was delayed. One to Victor from Dudley Sowerby, awaited them, on their return. "Confirms

Fredi," he said, showing it, and praising it as commendable, properly fervid. She made pretence to read, she

Her short beat of wings was over. She had joined herself with Victor's leap for a change, thirsting for the

scenery of the white peaks in heaven, to enjoy through his enjoyment, if her own capacity was dead: and she

had found it revive, up to some recovery of her old songful readiness for invocations of pleasure. Escape and

beauty beckoned ahead; behind were the chains. These two letters of the one fact plucked her back. The

chained body bore the fluttering spirit: or it was the spirit in bonds, that dragged the body. Both were abashed

before the image of her girl. Out of the riddle of her strange Nesta, one thing was clear: she did not love the

man: and Nataly tasted gladness in that, from the cup of poisonous regrets at the thought. Her girl's heart

would not be broken. But if he so strongly loved her, as to hold to this engagement? . . . It might then be

worse. She dropped a plumbline into the young man, sounding him by what she knew of him and judged.

She had to revert to Nesta's charm, for the assurance of his anchored attachment.

Her holiday took the burden of her trouble, and amid the beauty of a disenchanted scene, she resumed the

"Didn't you know, my dear, the familyseat is Cronidge, two miles out from the Wells?and particularly

"My dear love, you are pale about it. This is a matter between men. I write, thanking for the honour and so

forth; and I appoint an interview; and I show him my tablets. He must be told, necessarily. Incidents of this

kind come in their turn. If Dudley does not account himself the luckiest young fellow in the kingdom, he's not

worthy of his good fortune. I wish they were both here now, honeymooning among these peaks, seeing the

"Seems indifferent?mere trick to hide the blushes. And I, too, I'm interested in Delphica. Delphica and

Falarique will be fine stage business. Of course, Dr. Bouthoin and his curate!we know what Old England

"At any rate, Mr. Durance hurts no one. You will, in your letter, appoint the day of the interview?"

"Hurts himself! Yes, dearest; appoint forten days homeward eleventh day from today. And you to

Fredi: a bit of descriptionas you can, my Nataly! Happy to be a dolomite, to be painted by Nataly's pen."

The sign is evil, when we have a vexatious ringing in the ear of some small piece of familiar domestic

chatter, and subject it to scrutiny, hang on it, worry and magnify it. What will not creatures under sway of the

sensational life, catch at to emphasize and strengthen distaste, until distaste shall have a semblance of reason,

in the period of the mind's awakening to revolt! Nataly shrank from the name of dolomite, detested the name,

though the scenes regained their beauty or something of it beneath her showery vision. Every time Victor

spoke of dolomites on the journey homeward, she had at heart an accusation of her cowardice, her duplicity,

frailty, treachery to the highest of her worship and sole support of her endurance in the world: not much

blaming him: but the degrading view of herself sank them both. On a shifty soil, down goes the idol. For him

The smell of the Channel brine inspirited her sufficiently to cast off the fit and make it seem, in the main, a

bodily depression; owing to causes, of which she was beginning to have an apprehensive knowledge: and

A TUCKET of herald newspapers told the world of Victor's returning to his London. Pretty Mrs. Blathenoy

was Nataly's first afternoon visitor, and was graciously received; no sign of inquiry for the cause of the lady's

alacrity to greet her being shown. Colney Durance came in, bringing the rumour of an Australian cantatrice to

kindle Europe; Mr. Peridon, a seeker of tidings from the city of Bourges; Miss Priscilla Graves, reporting of

Skepsey, in a holiday Sunday tone, that his alcoholic partner might at any moment release him; Mr. Septimus

Barmby, with a hanged heavy look, suggestive of a wharfside crane swinging the ponderous thing he had to

"She was well?" the mother asked, and the grand basso pitched forth an affirmative.

She laughed, glad of an escape from the conversational formalities imposed on her by this Mrs. Victor

Radnor's mighty manner. "But what girl worth anything! . . . We all can do that, I hope, for a scratch!"

Mr. Catkin appeared; ten minutes after his Peridon. He had met Victor near the Exchange, and had left him

"Ah, when Victor takes to Verdi, it's a flat City, and wants a burst of drum and brass," Colney said; and he

hummed a few bars of the march in Attila, and shrugged. He and Victor had once admired that blatancy.

Mr. Pempton appeared, according to anticipation. He sat himself beside Priscilla. Entered Mrs. John Cormyn,

voluminous; Mrs. Peter Yatt, effervescent; Nataly's own people were about her and she felt at home.

Mrs. Blathenoy pushed a small thorn into it, by speaking of Captain Fenellan, and aside, as if sharing him

with her. Nataly heard, that Dartrey had been the guest of these Blathenoys. Even Dartrey was but a man!

The cool counterinterrogation was disregarded. "So sad! In the desert! a cup of pure water worth more than

Nataly could have cried: Snake! Her play at brevity had certainly been foiled. She nodded gravely. A load of

dusky wonders and speculations pressed at her bosom. She disdained to question the mouth which had bitten

Mrs. Blathenoy, resolving, that despite the jealousy she excited, she would have her friend in Captain

Fenellan, whom she likedliked, she was sure, quite as innocently as any other woman of his acquaintance

did, departed: and she hugged her innocence defiantly, with the mournful pride which will sometimes act as a

She shook her head. Her ears buzzed. If he had it from Simeon Fenellan, Victor must have known it.

As soon as she stood alone, she dropped on a chair, like one who has taken a shot in the heart, and that

hideous tumult of wild cries at her ears blankly ceased. Dartrey, Victor, Nesta, were shifting figures of the

mighthavebeen: for whom a wretched erring woman, washed clean of her guilt by death, in a far land, had

gone to her end: vainly gone: and now another was here, a figure of wood, in man's shape, conjured up by

one of the three, to divide the two others; likely to be fatal to her or to them: to her, she hoped, if the choice

was to be: and beneath the leaden hope, her heart set to a rapid beating, a fainter, a chill at the core.

She snatched for breath. She shut her eyes, and with open lips, lay waiting; prepared to thank the kindness

But she had been near itvery near it? A gush of pity for Victor, overwhelmed her hardness of mind.

Unreflectingly, she tried her feet to support her, and tottered to the door, touched along to the stairs, and

descended them, thinking strangely upon such a sudden weakness of body, when she would no longer have

thought herself the weak woman. Her aim was to reach the library. She sat on the stairs midway, pondering

over the length of her journey: and now her head was clearer; for she was travelling to get Railwayguides,

and might have had them from the hands of a footman, and imagined that she had considered it prudent to

hide her investigation of those books: proofs of an understanding fallen backward to the state of infant and

A slam of the kitchen stairdoor restored her. She betrayed no infirmity of footing as she walked past

Arlington in the hall; and she was alive to the voice of Skepsey presently on the doorsteps. Arlington

Victor had written: "My love, I dine with Blathenoy in the City, at the Walworth. Business. Skepsey for

Skepsey was ushered in. His wife had expired at noon, he said; and he postured decorously the grief he could

not feel, knowing that a lady would expect it of him. His wife had fallen down stone steps; she died in

hospital. He wished to say, she was no loss to the country; but he was advised within of the prudence of

abstaining from comment and trusting to his posture, and he squeezed a drop of conventional sensibility out

Nataly sent a line to Victor: "Dearest, I go to bed early, am tired. Dine well. Come to me in the morning."

She reproached herself for coldness to poor Skepsey, when he had gone. The prospect of her being alone until

She found a relief also in work at the book of the trains. A walk to the telegraphstation strengthened her.

Especially after despatching a telegram to Mr. Dudley Sowerby at Cronidge, and one to Nesta at Moorsedge,

did she become stoutly nerved. The former was requested to meet her at Penshurst station at noon. Nesta was

From the time of the flying of these telegrams, up to the tap of Victor's knuckle on her bedroom door next

morning, she was not more reflectively conscious than a packet travelling to its destination by pneumatic

tube. Nor was she acutely impressionable to the features and the voice she loved.

"Well, my love! Wellpoor Dartrey! I fancy I hadn't a confirmation of the news. I remember a horrible fit of

envy on hearing the hint: not much more than a hint: serious illness, was it?or expected event. Hardly

worth while to trouble my dear soul, till certain. Anything about wives, forces me to think of myselfmy

"You've heard of duels in dark rooms:that was the case between Blathenoy and me last night for an hour."

She feigned somnolent fatigue over her feverish weariness of heart. He kissed her on the forehead.

Her spellbound intention to speak of Dudley Sowerby to him, was broken by the sounding of the halldoor,

Life surged to her with the thought, that she could decide and take her step. Many were the years back since

she had taken a step; less independently then than now; unregretted, if fatal. Her brain was heated for the

larger view of things and the swifter summing of them. It could put the man at a remove from her and say,

that she had lived with him and suffered intensely. It gathered him to her breast rejoicing in their union: the

sharper the scourge, the keener the exultation. But she had one reproach to deafen and beat down. This did

not come on her from the world: she and the world were too much foot to foot on the antagonist's line, for her

to listen humbly. It came of her quick summary survey of him, which was unnoticed by the woman's present

fiery mind as being new or strange in any way: simply it was a fact she now read; and it directed her to

reproach herself for an abasement beneath his leadership, a blind subserviency and surrender of her faculties

to his greater powers, such as no soul of a breathing body should yield to man: not to the highest, not to the

Titan, not to the most Godlike of men. Under cloak, they demand it. They demand their bane.

The reproach on her was, that she, in her worship, had been slave, not helper. Scarcely was she irreproachable

in the character of slave. If it had but been utter slave! she phrased the words, for a further reproach. She

remembered having at times murmured, dissented. And it would have been a desperate proud thought to

comfort a slave, that never once had she known even a secret opposition to the will of her lord.

But she had: she recalled instances. Up they rose; up rose everything her mind ranged over, subsiding

immediately when the service was done. She had not conceived her beloved to be infallible, surest of guides

Her heart answered. And that heart also was arraigned: and the heart's fleshly habitation acting on it besides:

so flagellant of herself was she: covertly, however, and as the chaste among women can consent to let our

animal face them. Not grossly, still perceptibly to her penetrative hard eye on herself, she saw the senses of

the woman under a charm. She saw, and swam whirling with a pang of revolt from her personal being and

Her rational intelligence righted her speedily. She could say in truth, by proof, she loved the man: nature's

It was a happy crosscurrent recollection, that the very beginning and spring of this wild cast of her life,

issued from something he said and did (merest of airy gestures) to signify the blessing of lifehow good and

fair it is. A drooping mood in her had been struck; he had a look like the winged lyric up in blue heavens: he

raised the head of the young flower from its contemplation of gravemould. That was when he had much to

bear: Mrs. Burman present: and when the stranger in their household had begun to pity him and have a dread

of her feelings. The lucent splendour of his eyes was memorable, a light above the rolling oceans of Time.

She had given him her life, little aid. She might have closely counselled, wound in and out with his ideas.

Sensible of capacity, she confessed to the having been morally subdued, physically as well; swept onward;

and she was arrested now by an accident, like a waif of the riverfloods by the dip of a branch. Time that it

should be! But was not Mr. Durance, inveighing against the favoured system for the education of women,

right when he declared them to be unfitted to speak an opinion on any matter external to the household or in a

crisis of the household? She had not agreed with him: he presented stinging sentences, which irritated more

than they enlightened. Now it seemed to her, that the model women of men make pleasant slaves, not true

mates: they lack the worldly training to know themselves or take a grasp of circumstances. There is an exotic

fostering of the senses for women, not the strengthening breath of vital common air. If good fortune is with

them, all may go well: the stake of their fates is upon the perpetual smooth flow of good fortune. She had

never joined to the cry of the women. Few among them were having it in the breast as loudly.

Hard on herself, too, she perceived how the social rebel had reduced her mind to propitiate a simulacrum,

reflected from out, of an enthroned Society within it, by an advocacy of the existing laws and rules and

habits. Eminently servile is the tolerated lawbreaker: none so conservative. Not until we are driven back upon

an unviolated Nature, do we call to the intellect to think radically: and then we begin to think of our fellows.

Or when we have set ourselves in motion direct for the doing of the right thing: have quitted the carriage at

the station, and secured the ticket, and entered the train, counting the passage of time for a simple rapid hour

before we have eased heart in doing justice to ourself and to another; then likewise the mind is lighted for

radiation. That doing of the right thing, after a term of paralysis, cowardiceany evil nameis one of the

Nataly had it. But her mind was actually radiating, and the comfort to her heart evoked the image of Dartrey

Fenellan. She saw a possible reason for her bluntness to the coming scene with Dudley.

At once she said, No! and closed the curtain; knowing what was behind, counting it nought. She repeated

almost honestly her positive negative. How we are mixed of the many elements! she thought, as an observer;

and selfjustifyingly thought on, and with truth, that duty urged her upon this journey; and proudly thought,

that she had not a shock of the painful great organ in her breast at the prospect at the end, or any apprehension

Yet the need of peace or some solace needed to prepare her for the interview turned her imagination

burningly on Dartrey. She would not allow herself to meditate over hopes and schemes:Nesta free: Dartrey

free. She vowed to her soul sacredlyand she was one of those in whom, the Divinity lives, that they may

do sonot to speak a word for the influencing of Dudley save the one fact. Consequently, for a personal

indulgence, she mused; she caressed maternally the object of her musing; of necessity, she excluded Nesta;

The scene was waved away. That one so loving him, partly worthy of him, ready to traverse the world now

beside himwho could it be other than she who knew and prized his worth? Foolish! It is one of the

hatefuller scourges upon women whenever, a little shaken themselves, they muse upon some man's image,

that they cannot put in motion the least bit of drama without letting feminine self play a part; generally to

Dartrey's temper of the caged lion dominated by his tamer, served as keynote for any amount of saddest

colouring. He controlled the brute: but he held the contempt of danger, the love of strife, the passion for

adventure; he had crossed the desert of human anguish. He of all men required a devoted mate, merited her.

Of all men living, he was the hardest to match with a womanwith a woman deserving him.

The train had quitted London. Now for the country, now for free breathing! She who two days back had come

from Alps, delighted in the look on flat green fields. It was under the hallucination of her saying in flight

adieu to them, and to England; and, that somewhere hidden, to be found in Asia, Africa, America, was the

man whose ideal of life was higher than enjoyment. His caged brute of a temper offered opportunities for

delicious petting; the sweetest a woman can bestow: it lifts her out of timidity into an adoration still

palpitatingly fearful. Ah, but familiarity, knowledge, confirmed assurance of his character, lift her to another

stage, above the pleasures. May she not prove to him how really matched with him she is, to disdain the

pleasures, cheerfully accept the burdens, meet death, if need be; readily face it as the quietly grey tomorrow:

at least, show herself to her hero for a womanthe incredible being to most menwho treads the terrors as

well as the pleasures of humanity beneath her feet, and may therefore have some pride in her stature. Ay, but

only to feel the pride of standing not so shamefully below his level beside him.

Woods were flying past the carriagewindows. Her solitary companion was of the class of the admiring

gentlemen. Presently he spoke. She answered. He spoke again. Her mouth smiled, and her accompanying

New ideas were set revolving in her. Dartrey and Victor grew to a likeness; they became hazily one man, and

the mingled phantom, complimented her on her preserving a good share of the beauty of her youth. The face

perhaps: the figure rather too well suits the years! she replied. To reassure her, this Dartrey Victor drew her

close and kissed her; and she was confused and passed into the breast of Mrs. Burman expecting an operation

"Penshurst is the next station," said the gentleman. Here was a theme for him! The stately mansion, the noble

grounds, and Sidney! He discoursed of them. The handsome lady appeared interested. She was interested also

by his description of a neighbouring village, likely one hundred years hence to be a place of pilgrimage for

Americans and far Australians. Age, he said, improves true beauty; and his eyelids indicated a levelling to

perform the soft intentness. Mechanically, a ball rose in her throat; the remark was illuminated by a saying of

Colney's, with regard to his countrymen at the play of courtship. No laughter came. The gentleman talked on.

All fancies and internal communications left her. Slowness of motion brought her to the plain piece of work

she had to do, on a colourless earth, that seemed foggy; but one could see one's way. Resolution is a form of

"Not for two days. You have not heard? The Miss Duvidneys have gone to Brighton."

Informing the mother of his betrothed, that he had ridden over from Cronidge, he speculated on the place to

select for her luncheon, and he spoke of his horse being led up and down outside the station. Nataly inquired

for the hour of the next train to London. He called to one of the porters, obtained and imparted the time;

evidently now, as shown by an unevenness of his lifted brows, expecting news of some little weight.

"My mother was to have called on the Miss Duvidneys. They left hurriedly; I think it was unanticipated by

Nesta. I venture . . . you pardon the liberty . . . she allows me to entertain hopes. Mr. Radnor, I am hardly too

bold in thinking . . . I trust, in appealing to you . . . at least I can promise."

"Mr. Sowerby, you have done my daughter the honour to ask her hand in marriage."

He said: "I have," and had much to say besides, but deferred: a blow was visible. The father had been more

"Indeed, Mrs. Radnor, I was coming to London tomorrow, with the consent of my family."

"Mount and ride back. Leave me: I shall not eat. Reflect, by yourself. You are in the position of one who is

She gave her hand. He touched it and bent. He looked at her. A surge of impossible questions rolled to his

mouth and rolled back, with the thought of an incredible thing, that her manner, more than her words, held

He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bowing, to one of the wayside trees, cantered. The man

was gone; but not from Nataly's vision that face of wet chalk under one of the shades of fire.

DUDLEY rode back to Cronidge with his thunderstroke. It filled him, as in those halls of political clamour,

where explanatory speech is not accepted, because of a drowning tide of hot blood on both sides. He sought

to win attention by submitting a resolution, to the effect, that he would the next morning enter into the

presence of Mr. Victor Radnor, bearing his family's feelings, for a discussion upon them. But the brutish

tumult, in addition to surcharging, encased him: he could not rightly conceive the nature of feelings: men

were driving shoals; he had lost hearing and touch of individual men; had become a house of angrily

He was hurt, he knew; and therefore he supposed himself injured, though there were contrary outcries, and he

The girl was caught away to the thinnest of wisps in a dust whirl. Reverting to the father and mother, his

idea of a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered

deeper sentiments; which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a monstrous puffball

of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness; trebling his hundredweights to keep him from dancing like a

bladderblock of elastic lumber; thinking occasionally, amid the mournful spectacle, of the atmospheric pipe

of communication with the world above, whereby he was deafened yet sustained. One tug at it, and he was up

on the surface, disengaged from the hideous harness, joyfully no more that burly phantom cleaving green

slime, free! and the roaring stopped; the world looked flat, foreign, a place of crusty promise. His wreck,

animated by the dim strange fish below, appeared fairer; it winked lurefully when abandoned.

The internal state of a gentleman who detested intangible metaphor as heartily as the vulgarest of our

gobblegobbets hate it, metaphor only can describe; and for the reason, that he had in him just something

more than is within the compass of the language of the meatmarkets. He hadand had it not the less

because he fain would not have hadsufficient stuff to furnish forth a soul's epic encounter between Nature

and Circumstance: and metaphor, simile, analysis, all the fraternity of old lamps for lighting our abysmal

Free, and rejoicing; without the wish to be free; at the same time humbly and sadly acquiescing in the

stronger claim of his family to pronounce the decision: such was the second stage of Dudley's perturbation

after the blow. A letter of Nesta's writing was in his pocket: he knew her address. He could not reply to her

until he had seen her father: and that interview remained necessarily prospective until he had come to his

exact resolve, not omitting his critical approval of the sentences giving it shape, stamp, dignitya noble's

Nesta wrote briefly. The apostrophe was, "Dear Mr. Sowerby." She had engaged to send her address. Her

father had just gone. The Miss Duvidneys had left the hotel yesterday for the furnished house facing the sea.

According to arrangements, she had a liverystable hack, and had that morning trotted out to the downs with

He noticed approvingly her avoidance of an allusion to the `Delphica' of Mr. Durance's incomprehensible

serial story, or whatever it was; which, as he had shown her, annoyed him, for its being neither fact nor fun;

and she had insisted on the fun; and he had painfully tried to see it or anything of a meaning; and it seemed to

him now, that he had been humiliated by the obedience to her lead: she had offended by her harping upon

Delphica. However, here it was unmentioned. He held the letter out to seize it in the large, entire.

Her handwriting was good, as good as the writing of the most agreeable lady on earth. Dudley did not blame

her for letting the lady be deceived in herif she knew her position. She might be ignorant of it. And to

strangers, to chance acquaintances, even to friends, the position, of the loathsome name, was not materially

He sided, edging away, against his family. But a vision of the earldom coming to him, stirred reverential

objections, composed of all which his unstained family could protest in religion, to repudiate an alliance with

a stained house, and the guilty of a condonation of immorality. Who would have imagined Mr. Radnor a

private sinner flaunting for one of the righteous? And she, the mother, a ladyquite a lady; having really a

sense of duty, sense of honour! That she must be a lady, Dudley was convinced. He beheld through a porous

crape, woven of formal respectfulness, with threads of personal disgust, the scene, striking him drearly like a

distant great mansion's conflagration across moorland at midnight, of a lady's breach of bonds and plunge of

all for love. How had it been concealed? In Dudley's upper sphere, everything was exposed: Scandal walked

naked and unashamedfigurante of the polite world. But still this lady was of the mint and coin, a true lady.

Handsome now, she must have been beautiful. And a comprehensible pride (for so would Dudley have borne

it) keeps the forsaken man silent up to death: . . . grandly silent; but the loss of such a woman is enough to

kill a man! Not in time, though! Legitimacy evidently, by the mother's confession, cannot protect where it is

wanted. Dudley was optically affected by a round spot of the world swinging its shadow over Nesta.

He pitied, and strove to be sensible of her. The effort succeeded so well, that he was presently striving to be

insensible. The former state, was the mounting of a wall; the latter, was a sinking through a chasm. There

would be family consultations, abhorrent; his father's agonized amazement at the problem presented to a

family of scrupulous principles and pecuniary requirements; his mother's blunt mention of the abominable

namemedi�vally vindicated in champions of certain princely families indeed, but morally condemned;

always under condemnation of the Church: a blot: and handed down: Posterity, and it might be a titled

posterity, crying out. A man in the situation of Dudley could not think solely of himself. The nobles of the

land are bound in honour to their posterity. There you have one of the prominent permanent distinctions

His mother would again propose her chosen bride for him: Edith Averst, with the dowry of a present one

thousand pounds per annum, and prospect of six or so, excluding Sir John's estate, Carping, in Leicestershire;

a fair estate, likely to fall to Edith; consumption seized her brothers as they ripened. A fair girl too; only

Dudley did not love her; he wanted to love. He was learning the trick from this other one, who had become

obscured and diminished, tainted, to the thought of her; yet not extinct. Sight of her was to be dreaded.

Unguiltily tainted, in herself she was innocent. That constituted the unhappy invitation to him to swallow one

half of his feelings, which had his world's blessing on it, for the beneficial enlargement and enthronement of

the baser unblest half, which he hugged and distrusted. Can innocence issue of the guilty? He asked it, hoping

it might be possible: he had been educated in his family to believe, that the laws governing human institutions

are divineuntil History has altered them. They are altered, to present a fresh bulwark against the infidel.

His conservative mind, retiring in good order, occupied the next rearward post of resistance. Secretly behind

it, the man was proud of having a heart to beat for the cause of the besieging enemy, in the present instance.

When this was blabbed to him, and he had owned it, he attributed his weakness to excess of nature, the liking

for a fair face.Oh, but more! spirit was in the sweet eyes. She led himshe did lead him in spiritual

things; led him out of common circles of thought, into refreshing new spheres; he had reminiscences of his

having relished the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications: and really, in spite of her

inferior flimsy girl's education, she could boast her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in

commerce with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle for humour: she taught

him at times to put away his contempt of the romantic; she had actually shown him, that his expressed

contempt of it disguised a dread: as it did, and he was conscious of the foolishness of it now while pursuing

her image, while his intelligence and senses gave her the form and glory of young morning.

Wariness counselled him to think it might be merely the play of her youth; and also the disposition of a man

in harness of business, exaggeratingly to prize an imagined finding of the complementary feminine of

himself. Venerating purity as he did, the question, whether the very sweetest of pure young women, having

such an origin, must not at some time or other show trace of the origin, surged up. If he could only have been

sure of her moral exemption from taint, a generous ardour, in reserve behind his anxious dubieties, would

have precipitated Dudley to quench disapprobation and brave the world under a buckler of those monetary

advantages, which he had but stoutly to plead with the House of Cantor, for the speedy overcoming of a

reluctance to receive the nameless girl and prodigious heiress. His family's instruction of him, and his

inherited tastes, rendered the aspect of a Nature stripped of the clothing of the laws offensive down to

devilish: we grant her certain steps, upon certain conditions accompanied by ceremonies; and when she

violates them, she becomes visibly again the revolutionary wicked old beast bent on levelling our sacredest

edifices. An alliance with any of her votaries, appeared to Dudley as an act of treason to his house, his class,

and his tenets. And nevertheless he was haunted by a cry of criminal happiness for and at the commission of

the act. He would not decide to be `precipitate,' and the days ran their course, until Lady Grace Halley arrived

at Cronidge, a widow. Lady Cantor spoke to her of Dudley's unfathomable gloom. Lady Grace took him

"Coming through town, for the first time yesterday. I had it of all men!from a Sir Abraham Quatley, to

whom I was recommended to go, about my husband's shares in a South American Railway; and we talked,

and it came out. He knows; he says, it is not generally known; and he likes, respects Mr. Victor Radnor; we

are to keep the secret. Hum? He had heard of your pretensions; and our relationship, etc.: `esteemed' ityou

know the City dialecthis duty to mention, etc. That was after I had spied on his forehead the something I

An attachment was indicated, as belonging to the case. She was not a woman to whom the breathing of

pastoral passion would be suitable; yet he saw that she despised him for a lover; and still she professed to

understand his dilemma. Perplexity at the injustice of fate and persons universally, put a wrinkled mask on

his features and the expression of his feelings. They were torn, and the world was torn; and what he wanted,

was delay, time for him to define his feelings and behold a recomposed picture of the world. He had already

They agreed as to the behaviour of the girl's mother. It reflected on the father, he thought.

"Difficult thing to proclaim, before an engagement!" Her shoulders were restless.

The next day she was on the line to London, armed with the proposal of an appointment for the Hon. Dudley

SKEPSEY ushered Lady Grace into his master's private room, and entertained her during his master's

absence. He had buried his wife, he said: she feared, seeing his posture of the soaping of hands at one

shoulder, that he was about to bewail it; and he did wish to talk of it, to show his modest companionship with

her in loss, and how a consolation for our sorrows may be obtained: but he won her approval, by taking the

acceptable course between the dues to the subject and those to his hearer, as a model cab should drive

A day of holiday at Hampstead, after the lowering of the poor woman's bones into earth, had been followed

by a descent upon London; and at night he had found himself in the immediate neighbourhood of a public

house, noted for sparring exhibitions and instructions on the first floor; and he was melancholy, unable quite

to disperse "the ravens" flocking to us on such days: though, if we ask why we have to go out of the world,

there is a corresponding inquiry, of what good was our coming into it; and unless we are doing good work for

our country, the answer is not satisfactoryexcept, that we are as well gone. Thinking which, he was

accosted by a young woman: perfectly respectable, in every way: who inquired if he had seen a young man

enter the door. She described him, and reviled the temptations of those houses; and ultimately, as she insisted

upon going in to look for the young man and use her persuasions to withdraw him from "that snare of Satan,"

he had accompanied her, and he had gone upstairs and brought the young man down. But friends, or the

acquaintances they call friends, were with him, and they were "in drink," and abused the young woman; and

she had her hand on the young man's arm, quoting Scripture. Sad to relate of men bearing the name of

Englishmen and it was hardly much better if they pleaded intoxication! they were not content to tear the

young man from her grasp, they hustled her, pushed her out, dragged her in the street. "It became me to step

to her defence: she was meek," said Skepsey. "She had a great opinion of the efficacy of quotations from

Scripture; she did not recriminate. I was able to release her and the young man she protected, on condition of

my going upstairs to give a display of my proficiency. I had assured them, that the poor fellows who stood

against me were not a proper match. And of course, they jeered, but they had the evidence, on the pavement.

So I went up with them. I was heavily oppressed, I wanted relief, I put on the gloves. He was a bigger man;

they laughed at the little one. I told them, it depended upon a knowledge of first principles, and the power to

apply them. I will not boast, my lady: my junior by ten years, the man went down; he went down a second

time; and the men seemed surprised; I told them, it was nothing but first principles put into action. I mention

the incident, for the extreme relief it afforded me at the close of a dark day."

"So you cured your grief!" said Lady Grace; and Skepsey made way for his master.

Victor's festivallights were kindled, beholding her; cressets on the windowsill, lamps inside.

"Am I so welcome?" There was a pull of emotion at her smile. "What with your little factotum and you, we

are flattered to perdition when we come here. He has been proposing, by suggestion, like a Courtphysician,

the putting on of his boxinggloves, for the consolation of the widowed: meant most kindly! and it's a

"Oh! but our boxinggloves can do mischief enough. You have something to say, I see."

The silly ring of her voice and the pathless tattle changed; she talked to suit her laden look. "You hit it. I

"Certainly she did," said Victor, and he thought that instantaneously of the thing done. "Oh, then she spoke to

him! She has kept it from me. For now nearly a weeksix daysI've seen her spying for something she

expected, like a face behind a door three inches ajar. She has not been half alive; she refused

explanations;she was expecting to hear from him, of himthe decision, whatever it's to be!"

"I can't aid you there," said Lady Grace. "He's one of the unreadables. He names Tuesday next week."

"Fredi?poor Fredi!ah, my poor girl, yes!No, she knows nothing. Here is the truth of it:she, the

legitimate, lives: they say she lives. Well, then, she lives against all rules physical or medical, lives by sheer

force of willit's a miracle of the power of a human creature to . . . I have it from doctors, friends,

attendants, they can't guess what she holds on, to keep her breath.All the happiness in life!if only it

could benefit her. But it's the cause of death to us. Do you see, dear friend;you are a friend, proved friend,"

he took her hand, and held and pressed it, in great need of a sanguine response to emphasis; and having this

warm feminine hand, his ideas ran off with it. "The friend I need! You have courage. My Nataly, poor

dearshe can endure, in her quiet way. A woman of courage would take her place beside me and compel the

world to do her homage, help;a bright ready smile does it! She would never be beaten. Of course, we could

have lived under a bushelstifled next to death! But I am for light, airbattle, if you like. I want a

comrade, not anot that I complain. I respect, pity, loveI do love her, honour: only, we want something

else courageto face the enemy. Quite right, that she should speak to Dudley Sowerby. He has to know,

must know; all who deal closely with us must know. But see a moment: I am waiting to see the impediment

dispersed, which puts her at an inequality with the world: and then I speak to all whom it concerns: not

before: for her sake. How is it now? Dudley will ask . . . you understand. And when I am forced to confess,

that the mother, the mother of the girl he seeks in marriage, is not yet in that state herself, probably at that

very instant the obstacle has crumbled to dust! I say, probably: I have informationdoctors, friends,

attendantsthey all declare it cannot last outside a week. But you are heretrue, I could swear! a touch of a

hand tells me. A woman's hand? Well, yes: I read by the touch of a woman's hand:betrays more than her

looks or her lips!" He sank his voice. "I don't talk of condoling: if you are in grief, you know I share it." He

kissed her hand, and laid it on her lap; eyed it, and met her eves; took a header into her eyes, and lost himself.

A nip of his conscience moved his tongue to say: "As for guilt, if it were known . . . a couple of ascetics

absolutely!" But this was assumed to be unintelligible; and it was merely the apology to his conscience in

communion with the sprite of a petticoated fair one who was being subjected to tender little liberties,

necessarily addressed in enigmas. He righted immediately, under a perception of the thoroughbred's contempt

for the barriers of wattled sheep; and caught the word "guilt," to hide the Philistine citizen's lapse, by relating

historically, in abridgement, the honest beauty of the passionate loves of the two whom the world proscribed

for honestly loving. There was no guilt. He harped on the word, to erase the recollection of his first use of it.

"Fiddle," said Lady Grace. "The thing happened. You have now to carry it through. You require a woman's

aid in a social matter. Rely on me, for what I can do. You will see Dudley on Tuesday? I will write. Be plain

with him; not forgetting the gilding, I need not remark. Your Nesta has no aversion?"

"Good enough beginning." She rose, for the atmosphere was heated, rather heavy. "And if one proves to be of

The fair blackclad widow's quick and singular interwreathing of the evanescent pretty pouts and frowns

dimpled like the brush of the wind on a sunny pool in a shady place; and her forehead was close below his

chin, her lips not far. Her apparel was attractively mourning. Widows in mourning, when they do not lean

over extremely to the Stygian shore, with the complexions of the drugs which expedited the defunct to the

ferry, provoke the manly arm within reach of them to pluck their pathetic blooming persons clean away from

it. What of the widow who visibly likes the living? Compassion, sympathy, impulse; and gratitude, impulse

again, living warmth; and a spring of the blood to wrestle with the King of Terrors for the other poor harper's

halfnightcapped Eurydice; and a thirst, sudden as it is overpowering; and the solicitude, a reflective

solicitude, to put the seal on a thing and call it a fact, to the astonishment of history; and a kick of our

naughty youth in its coffin;all the insurgencies of Nature, with her colonel of the regiment absent, and her

veering trick to drive two vessels at the cross of a track into collision, combine for doing that, which is very

much more, and which affects us at the time so much less than did the pressure of a soft wedded hand by our

own elsewhere pledged one. On the contrary, we triumph, we have the rich flavour of the fruit for our pains;

The lady passed through the trial submitting, stiffening her shoulders, and at the close, shutting her eyes. She

stood cool in her blush, and eyed him like one gravely awakened. Having been embraced and kissed, she had

to consider her taste for the man, and acknowledge a neatness of impetuosity in the deed; and he was neither

apologizing culprit nor glorying bandit when it was done, but something of the lyric God tempering his

fervours to a pleased sereneness, not offering a renewal of them. He glowed transparently. He said: "You are

the woman to take a front place in the battle!" With this woman beside him, it was a conquered world.

Comparisons, in the jotting souvenirs of a woman of her class and set, favoured him; for she disliked

enterprising libertines and despised stumbling youths; and the genial simple glow of his look assured her, that

the vanished fiery moment would not be built on by a dating master. She owned herself. Or did she? Some

understanding of how the other woman had been won to the leap with him, was drawing in about her. She

would have liked to beg for the story; and she could as little do that as bring her tongue to reproach. If we

come to the den! she said to her thought of reproach. Our semicivilization makes it a den, where a scent in

his nostrils will spring the halftamed animal away to wildness. And she had come unanticipatingly, without

design, except perhaps to get a superior being to direct and restrain a gambler's hand; perhaps for the fee of a

"I may be able to help a littleI hope!" she fetched a breath to say, while her eyelids mildly sermonized; and

Victor commented passingly on the soundness of them, and talked of projects he entertained:Parliament!

"But I have only to mention it at home, and my poor girl will set in for shrinking."

"You succeed in everything you do," said she, and she cordially believed it; and that belief set the neighbour

memory palpitating. Success folded her waist, was warm upon her lips: she worshipped the figure of Success.

"I can't consent to fail, it's true, when my mind is on a thing," Victor rejoined.

He looked his mind on Lady Grace. The shiver of a maid went over her. These transparent visages, where the

thought which is half design is perceived as a lightning, strike lightning into the physically feebler. Her hand

begged, with the open palm, her head shook thrice; and though she did not step back, he bowed to the

negation, and then she gave him a grateful shadow of a smile, relieved, with a startled view of how greatly

relieved, by that sympathetic deference in the wake of the capturing intrepidity.

Her smile was flatteringly bright. "By the way, keep your City people close about you: entertain as much as

"Better. Sir Rodwell Blachington, Sir Abraham Quatley: and their wives. There's no drawing back now. And

The Tiddler mine was leisurely mounting. Victor stated the figures; he saluted her hand, and Lady Grace

passed out, with her heart on the top of them, and a buzz about it of the unexpected having occurred. She had

her experiences to match new patterns in events; though not very many. Compared with gambling, the game

of love was an idle entertainment. Compared with other players, this man was gifted.

Victor went in to Mr. Inchling's room, and kept Inchling from speaking, that he might admire him for he

knew not what, or knew not well what. The good fellow was devoted to his wife. Victor in old days had

called the wife Mrs. Grundy. She gossiped, she was censorious; she knewcould not but knowthe facts;

yet never by a shade was she disrespectful. He had a curious recollection of how his knowledge of Inchling

and his wife being always in concert, entirelywhatever they might think in privatedevoted to him in

action, had influenced, if it had not originally sprung, his resolve to cast off the pestilential cloak of obscurity

shortening his days, and emerge before a world he could illumine to give him back splendid reflections.

Inchling and his wife, it was: because the two were one: and if one, and subservient to him, knowing all the

story, why, it foreshadowed a conquered world! They were the one pulse of the married Grundy beating in

He rattled his views upon Indian business, to hold Inchling silent, and let his mind dwell almost lovingly on

the good faithful spouse, who had no phosphorescent writing of a recent throbbing event on the four walls of

He felt and regretted this. He greeted her with a doubled affectionateness. Her pitiable deficiency of courage,

excusing a man for this and that small matter in the thick of the conflict, made demands on him for gentle

"Mr. Barmby called. He has gone down to Tunbridge Wells for a week, to some friend there." She added, in

pain of thought: "I have seen Dartrey. He has brought Lord Clanconan to town, for a consultation, and

Her breast heaved. "If I cannot see my Nesta there, he will bring her up to me for a day."

"No hurry, no hurry: wait till the end of next week. And I must see Dartrey, on business, at once!"

She gave the address in a neighbouring square. He had minutes to spare before dinner, and flew. She was not

Colney Durance had told Dartrey, that Victor was killing her. She had little animation; her smiles were ready,

but faint. After her interview with Dudley, there had been a swoon at home; and her maid, sworn to secrecy,

LITTLE acts of kindness were not beyond the range of Colney Durance, and he ran down to Brighton, to give

the exiled Nesta some taste of her friendly London circle. The Duvidney ladies knew that the dreaded

gentleman had a regard for the girl. Their own, which was becoming warmer than they liked to think, was

impressed by his manner of conversing with her. "Child though she was," he paid her the compliment of a

sober as well as a satirical review of the day's political matter and recent publications; and the ladies were

introduced, in a wonderment, to the damsel Delphica. They listened placidly to a discourse upon her

performances, Japanese to their understandings. At New York, behold, another adventurous representative

and advocate of the European tongues has joined the party: Signor Jeridomani: a philologer, of course; a

politician in addition; Macchiavelli redivivus, it seems to fair Delphica. The speech he delivers at the

Syndicate Delmonico Dinner, is justly applauded by the New York Press as a masterpiece of astuteness. He

appears to be the only one of the party who has an eye for the dark. She fancies she may know a more widely

awake in the abstract. But now, thanks to jubilant Journals and Homeric laughter over the Continent, the

secret is out, in so far as the concurrents are all unmasked and exposed for the edification of the American

public. Dr. Bouthoin's eyebrows are up, Mr. Semhians disfigures his name by greatly gaping. Shall they

return to their Great Britain indignant? Patriotism, with the sauce of a luxurious expedition at no cost to the

private purse, restrains them. Moreover, there is no sign of any one of the others intending to quit the

expedition; and Mr. Semhians has done a marvel or two in the cricketfield: Old England looks up where she

can. What is painfully extraordinary to our couple, they find in the frigid attitude of the Americans toward

their `common tongue;' together with the rumour of a design to despatch an American rival emissary to

Nesta listened, inquired, commented, laughed; the ladies could not have a doubt that she was interested and

understood. She would have sketches of scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young

Germania was cleverly ingenuous indeeda seminary C�lim�ne; and between Delphica and M. Mytharete,

with whom she was arch�ological, ravishingly am*b�an of Homer. Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his

artless daughter, conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in the far East. He has

now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique, melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some day

startle their camp by the cast of more than a crow into it, and he is bent on establishing alliances; frightens the

supple Signor Jeridomani to lingual fixity; eulogizes Football, with Dr. Bouthoin; and retracts, or modifies,

his dictum upon the English, that, `masculine brawn they have in their bodies, but muscle they have not in

their feminine minds;' to exalt them, for a signally clean, if a dense, people: "Amousia, not Alousia, is their

enemy."How, when we have the noblest crop of poets? "You have never heartily embraced those aliens

among you until you learnt from us, that you might brag of them."Have they not endowed us with the

richest of languages?"The words of which are used by you, as old slippers, for puns." Mr. Semhians has

been superciliously and ineffectively punning in foreign presences: he and his chief are inwardly shocked by

a new perception;What if, now that we have the populace for paymaster, subservience to the literary tastes

of the populace should reduce the nation to its lowest mental level, and render us not only unable to compete

with the foreigner, but unintelligible to him, although so proudly paid at home! Is it not thus that nations are

seen of the Highest to be devouring themselves? "For," says Dr. Gannius, as if divining them, "this excessive

and applauded productiveness, both of your juvenile and your senile, in your modern literature, is it ever a

crop? Is it even the restorative perishable stuff of the markets? Is it not rather your streetpavement's patter of

raindrops, incessantly in motion, and as fruitful?" Mr. Semhians appeals to Delphica. "Genius you have,"

says she, stiffening his neck band, "genius in superabundance:"he throttles to the complexion of the

peony:"perhaps criticism is wanting." Dr. Gannius adds: "Perhaps it is the drillsergeant everywhere

Colney left the whole body of concurrents on the raised flooring of a famous New York Hall, clearly

entrapped, and incited to debate before an enormous audience, as to the merits of their respective languages.

"I hear," says Dr. Bouthoin to Mr. Semhians (whose gape is daily extending), "that the tickets cost ten

"No," she said, with good cheer, and became thoughtful, conscious of a funny reason for the wish to hear of

the fictitious creature disliked by Dudley. A funny and a naughty reason, was it? Not so very naughty: but it

was funny; for it was a spirit of opposition to Dudley, without an inferior feeling at all, such as girls should

Colney brought his viola for a duet; they had a pleasant musical evening, as in old days at Creckholt; and

Nesta, going upstairs with the ladies to bed, made them share her father's amused view of the lamb of the

flock this bitter gentleman became when he had the melodious instrument tucked under his chin. He was a

guest for the night. Dressing in the early hour, Nesta saw him from her window on the parade, and soon

joined him, to hear him at his bitterest, in the flush of the brine. "These lengths of blankfaced terraces

fronting sea!" were the satirist's present black beast. "So these moneyed English shoulder to the front place;

and that is the appearance they offer to their commercial God!" He gazed along the miles of "English

countenance," drearily laughing. Changeful ocean seemed to laugh at the spectacle. Some Orphic joke

"Ten, I think," she answered in his vein, and warmed him; leading him contemplatively to scrutinize her

Colney cast a weariful look backward on the "regiments of AngloChinese" represented to him by the

moneyed terraces, and said: "The face of a stopped watch!the only meaning it has is past date."

He had no liking for Dudley Sowerby. But it might have been an allusion to the general view of the houses.

But again, "the meaning of it past date," stuck in her memory. A certain face close on handsome, had a fatal

She spoke of her `exile'; wanted Skepsey to come down to her; moaned over the loss of her Louise. The

puzzle of the reason for the long separation from her parents, was evident in her mind, and unmentioned.

Nesta reminded him of certain verses he had written to celebrate her visit to the place when she was a child:

"Manifestly a foreigner to our shores, where the exactly inverse condition rules," Colney said.

A neatlegged Parisianlybooted lady, having the seawinds very enterprising with her dark wavy locks and

jacket and skirts, gave a cry of pleasure and a silvery "You dear!" at sight of Nesta; then at sight of one of us,

moderated her tone to a propriety equalling the most conventional. "We ride today?"

She sprinkled silvery sound on that name or on the adieu, blushed, blinked, frowned, sweetened her liplines,

"It is her husband, to whom she writes every morning. He is a captain in the army, or was. He is in Norway,

"Then the probability is, that the English officer continues his military studies."

"Ned may boast of his possession, when he has trimmed it and toned it a little."

At eleven o'clock he was in London, and Nesta rode beside Mrs. Marsett amid the troop.

A Southeasterly wind blew the waters to shifty goldleaf prints of brilliance under the sun.

"I took a liberty this morning, I called you `Dear' this morning," the lady said. "It's what I feel, only I have no

right to blurt out everything I feel, and I was ashamed. I am sure I must have appeared ridiculous. I got quite

"Oh! I know: to you alone. I should like to pluck out my heart and pitch it on the waves, to see whether it

would sink or swim. That's a funny idea, isn't it! I tell you everything that comes up. What shall I do when I

"When I had finished my letter to Ned, I dropped my head on it and behaved like a fool for several minutes. I

"But you don't lose me," said Nesta; "there is no ground for your supposing that you will. And your wish not

"If you knew!" Mrs. Marsett caught at her slippery tongue, and she carolled: "If we all knew everything, we

They were crossing the passage of a cavalcade of gentlemen, at the end of the East Cliff. One among them,

large and dominant, with a playful voice of brass, cried out: "And how do you do, Mrs. Judith Marsettha?

Mrs. Marsett's figure tightened; she rode stonily erect, looked level ahead. Her woman's red mouth was shut

"He did not salute you," Nesta remarked, to justify her for not having responded.

"That man knows I will not notice him. He is a beast. He will learn that I carry a horsewhip."

The sigh of the heavily laden came from Mrs. Marsett: "Am I pale? I dare say. I shall go on my knees

tonight hating myself that I was born `one of the frail sex.' We are, or we should ride at the coward and

strike him to the ground. Pray, pray do not look distressed! Now you know my Christian name. That dog of a

"You are near me. They can't hurt me, can't touch me, when I think that I'm talking with you. How I envy

"Nesta," said smiling Nesta. The smile was forced, that she might show kindness, for the lady was jarring on

Mrs. Marsett opened her lips: "Oh, my God, I shall be crying! let's gallop. No, wait, I'll tell you. I wish I

could! I will tell you of that man. That man is Major Worrell. One of the majors who manage to get to their

grade. A retired warrior. He married a handsome woman, above him in rank, with money; a good woman.

She was a good woman, or she would have had her vengeance, and there was never a word against her. She

must have loved thatNed calls him, fullblooded ox. He spent her money and he deceived her.You

innocent! Oh, you dear! I'd give the world to have your eyes. I've heard tell of `crystal clear,' but eyes like

yours have to tell me how deep and clear. Such a world for them to be in! I did pray, and used your name last

night on my knees, that youI said Nestamight never have to go through other women's miseries. Ah me!

"God help you!I am excited today. That man is poison to me. His wife forgave him three times. On three

occasions, that unhappy woman forgave him. He is great at his oaths, and a big breaker of them. She walked

out one November afternoon and met him riding along with a notorious creature. You know there are bad

women. They passed her, laughing. And look there, Nesta, see that groyne; that very one." Mrs. Marsett

pointed her whip hard out. "The poor lady went down from the height here; she walked into that rough

waterlook!steadying herself along it, and she plunged; she never came out alive. A week after her

Mrs. Marsett's talk, her presence hardly less, affected the girl with those intimations of tumult shown upon

smooth waters when the great elements are conspiring. She felt that there was a cause why she had to pity,

did pity her. It might be, that Captain Marsett wedded one who was of inferior station, and his wife had to

bear blows from cruel people. The supposition seemed probable. The girl accepted it; for beyond it, as the

gathering of the gale masked by hills, lay a brewing silence. What? She did not reflect. Her quick physical

sensibility curled to some breath of heated atmosphere brought about her by this new acquaintance: not

pleasant, if she had thought of pleasure: intensely suggestive of our life at the consuming tragic core, round

which the furnace pants. But she was unreflecting, feeling only a beyond and hidden.

Besides, she was an exile. Spelling at dark things in the dark, getting to have the sight which peruses

darkness, she touched the door of a mystery, that denied her its key, but showed the lock; and her life was

beginning to know of hours that fretted her to recklessness. Her friend Louise was absent: she had so few

friendsowing to that unsolved reason: she wanted one, of any kind, if only gentle: and this lady seemed to

need her: and she flattered; Nesta was in the mood for swallowing and digesting and making sweet blood of

At one time, she liked Mrs. Marsett best absent: in musing on her, wishing her well, having said the adieu.

For it was wearisome to hear praises of `innocence;' and women can do so little to cure that `wickedness of

men,' among the lady's conversational themes; and `love' too: it may be a `plague,' and it may be `heaven:' it

is better left unspoken of. But there were times when Mrs. Marsett's looks and tones touched compassion to

press her hand: an act that had a pledging signification in the girl's bosom: and when, by the simple avoidance

of ejaculatory fervours, Mrs. Marsett's quieted good looks had a shadow of a tender charm, more pathetic

than her outcries were. These had not always the sanction of polite usage: and her English was guilty of

sudden lapses to the Thameswater English of commerce and drainage instead of the upper wells. But there

are many uneducated ladies in the land. Many, too, whose tastes in romantic literature betray now and then by

peeps a similarity to Nesta's maid Mary's. Mrs. Marsett liked love, blood, and adventure. She had, moreover,

a favourite noble poet, and she begged Nesta's pardon for naming him, and she would not name him, and told

her she must not read him until she was a married woman, because he did mischief to girls. Thereupon she

fell into one of her silences, emerging with a cry of hate of herself for having ever read him. She did not

blame the bard. And, ah, poor bard! he fought his battle: he shall not be named for the brand on the name. He

has lit a sulphur match for the lower of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad frail

souls who could accuse him of piping devil's agent to them at the perilous instantpoor girls too!is

chastisement enough. This it is to be the author of unholy sweets: a Posterity sitting in judgement will grant,

that they were part of his honest battle with the hypocrite English Philistine, without being dupe of the plea or

at all the thirsty swallower of his sugary brandy. Mrs. Marsett expressed aloud her gladness of escape in

never having met a man like him; followed by her regret that `Ned' was so utterly unlike; except

Nesta's ears were fatigued. "My mother writes of you," she said, to vary the subject.

Mrs. Marsett looked. She sighed downright: "I have had my dream of a friend!It was that gentleman with

"I am not twentythree: not as old as I should be, for a guide to you. I know I would never do you harm. That

I know. I would walk into that water first, and take Mrs. Worrell's plunge:the last bath; a thorough cleanser

for a woman! Only, she was a good woman and didn't want it, as weas lots of us do:to wash off all

recollection of having met a man! Your mother would not like me to call you Nesta! I have never begged you

to call me Judith. Damnable name!" Mrs. Marsett revelled in the heat of the curse on it, as a relief to torture

of the breast, until a sense of the girl's alarmed hearing sent the word reverberating along her nerves and

shocked her with such an exposure of our Shaggy wild one on a lady's lips. She murmured: "Forgive me,"

and had the passion to repeat the epithet in shrieks, and scratch up male speech for a hatefuller; but the twitch

of Nesta's brows made her say: "Do pardon me. I did something in Scripture. Judith could again. Since that

brute Worrell crossed me riding with you, I loathe my name; I want to do things. I have offended you."

"Supposing you were some day to discover . . . tatata, all the things there are in the world." Mrs. Marsett

"Nesta . . . just now and then! . . . the first time we rode out together, coming back from the downs, I

remember, I spoke, without thinkingI was enragedof a case in the newspapers; and you had seen it, and

you were not afraid to talk of it. I remember I thought, Well, for a girl she's bold! I thought you knew more

than a girl ought to know: untilyou didyou set my heart going. You spoke of the poor women like an

angel of compassion. You said, we were all mixed up with their fateI forget the words. But no one ever

heard in Church anything that touched me so. I worshipped you. You said, you thought of them of often, and

longed to find out what you could do to help. And I thought, if they could hear you, and only come near you,

as I wasah, my heaven!Unhappy experiences? Yes. But when men get women on the slope to their

perdition, they have no mercy, none. They deceive, and they lie; they are false in acts and words; they do as

much as murder. They're never hanged for it. They make the laws! And then they become fathers of families,

and point the finger at the `wretched creatures.' They have a dozen names against women, for one at

"It maddens me at times to think! . . ." said Nesta, burning with the sting of vile names.

"Oh, there are bad women as well as bad men: but men have the power and the lead, and they take advantage

of it; and then they turn round and execrate us for not having what they have robbed us of!"

"I blame womenif I may dare, at my age," said Nesta, and her bosom heaved. "Women should feel for

their sex; they should not allow the names; they should go among their unhappier sisters. At the worst, they

are sisters! I am sure, that fallen cannot meanChrist shows it does not. He changes the tone of Scripture.

The women who are made outcasts, must be hopeless and go to utter ruin. We should, if we pretend to be

better, step between them and that. There cannot be any goodness unless it is a practised goodness. Otherwise

it is nothing more than paint on canvas. You speak to me of my innocence. What is it worth, if it is only a

picture and does no work to help to rescue? I fear I think most of the dreadful names that redden and sicken

us.The Old Testament!I have a French friend, a Mademoiselle Louise de Seillesyou should hear her:

she is intensely French, and a Roman Catholic, everything which we are not: but so human, so wise, and so

full of the pride of her sex! I love her. It is love. She will never marry until she meets a man who has the

respect for women, for all women. We both think we cannot separate ourselves from our sisters. She seems to

me to wither men, when she speaks of their injustice, their snares to mislead and their cruelty when they have

"And French and good!" Mrs. Marsett ejaculated. "My Ned reads French novels, and he says, their women. . .

. But your mademoiselle is a real one. If she says all that, I could kneel to her, French or not. Does she talk

"Not often: we lose our tempers. She wants women to have professions; at present they have not much choice

to avoid being penniless. Poverty, and the sight of luxury! It seems as if we produced the situation, to create

an envious thirst, and cause the misery. Things are improving for them; but we groan at the slowness of it."

Mrs. Marsett now declared a belief, that women were nearly quite as bad as men. "I don't think I could take

"How I should like to hear you! My Ned's a thorough Englishmangentleman, you know: he cares only for

sport; Shooting, Fishing, Hunting; and Football, Cricket, Rowing, and matches. He's immensely proud of

England in those things. And such muscle he has!though he begins to fancy his heart's rather weak. It's

digestion, I tell him. But he takes me to the Opera sometimesItalian Opera; he can't stand German. Down

at his place in Leicestershire, he tells me, when there's company, he hasI'm sure you sing beautifully.

When I hear beautiful singing, even from a woman they tell tales of, upon my word, it's true, I feel my sins all

melting out of me and I'm new made: I can't bear Ned to speak. Would you one day, one afternoon, before

the end of next week?it would do me such real good, you can't guess how much; if I could persuade you! I

know I'm asking something out of rules. For just half an hour! I judge by your voice in talking. Oh! it would

do me goodgood good to hear you sing. There is a tuned pianoa cottage; I don't think it sounds badly.

"No," said Nesta. And it was her nature that projected the word. Her awakened wits were travelling to her

from a distance, and she had an intimation of their tidings; and she could not have said what they were; or

why, for a moment, she hesitated to promise she would come. Her vision of the reality of things was without

written titles, to put the stamp of the world on it. She felt this lady to be one encompassed and in the hug of

the elementary forces, which are the terrors to inexperienced pure young women. But she looked at her, and

dared trust those lips, those eyes. She saw, through whatever might be the vessel, the spirit of the woman; as

the upper nobility of our brood are enabled to do in a crisis mixed of moral aversion and sisterly sympathy,

when nature cries to them, and the scales of convention, the mudspots of accident, even naughtiness, even

wickedness, all misfortune's issue, if we but see the one look upward, fall away. Reason is not excluded from

these blind throbs of a blood that strikes to right the doings of the Fates. Nesta did not err in her divination of

the good and the bad incarnate beside her, though both good and bad were behind a curtain; the latter sparing

her delicate senses, appealing to chivalry, to the simply feminine claim on her. Reason, acting in her heart as

a tongue of the flames of the forge where we all are wrought, told her surely that the good predominated. She

"An afternoon? Oh! what afternoon?" she was asked, and she said: "This afternoon, if you like."

So it was agreed: Mrs. Marsett acted violently the thrill of delight she felt in the prospect.

The ladies Dorothea and Virginia consulted, and pronounced the name of Marsett to be a reputable County

name. "There was a Leicestershire baronet of the name of Marsett." They arranged to send their

buttonblazing boy at Nesta's heels. Mrs. Marsett resided in a sidestreet not very distant from the featureless

NESTA and her maid were brought back safely through the dusk by their constellation of a boy, to whom the

provident ladies had entrusted her. They could not but note how short her syllables were. Her face was only

partly seen. They had returned refreshed from their drive on the populous and orderly parade so fair a

pattern of their England!after discoursing of "the dear child," approving her manners, instancing proofs of

her intelligence, nay, her possession of "character." They did so, notwithstanding that these admissions were

worse than their growing love for the girl, to confound established ideas. And now, in thoughtfulness on her

behalf, Dorothea said, "We have considered, Nesta, that you may be lonely; and if it is your wish, we will

leave our card on your new acquaintance." Nesta took her hand and kissed it; she declined, saying, "No,"

They had two surprises at the dinnerhour. One was the card of Dartrey Fenellan, naming an early time next

day for his visit; and the other was the appearance of the Rev. Stuart Rem, a welcome guest. He had come to

He had come also with serious information for the ladies, regarding the Rev. Abram Posterley. No sooner

was this out of his mouth than both ladies exclaimed: "Again!" So serious was it, that there had been a

consultation at the Wells; Mr. Posterley's friend, the Rev. Septimus Barmby, and his own friend, the Rev.

Groseman Buttermore, had journeyed from London to sit upon the case: and, "One hoped," Mr. Stuart Rem

said, "poor Posterley would be restored to the senses he periodically abandoned." He laid a hand on Tasso's

curls, and withdrew it at a menace of teeth. Tasso would submit to rough caresses from Mr. Posterley; he

would not allow Mr. Stuart Rem to touch him. Why was that? Perhaps for the reason of Mr. Posterley's being

so emotional as perpetually to fall a victim to some bright glance and require the rescue of his friends; the

Dorothea and Virginia were drawn to compassionate sentiments, in spite of the provoking recurrence of Mr.

Posterley's malady. He had not an income to support a wife. Always was this unfortunate gentleman

entangling himself in a passion for maid or widow of the Wells: and it was desperate, a fever. Mr. Stuart Rem

charitably remarked on his taking it so severely because of his very scrupulous good conduct. They pardoned

a little wound to their delicacy, and asked: "On this occasion?" Mr. Stuart Rem named a linendraper's

establishment near the pantiles, where a fair young woman served. "And her reputation?" That was an article

less presentable through plateglass, it seemed: Mr. Stuart Rem drew a prolonged breath into his nose.

"It is most melancholy!" they said in unison. "Nothing positive," said he. "But the suspicion of a shadow, Mr.

Stuart Rem! You will not permit it?" He stated, that his friend Buttermore might have influence. Dorothea

said: "When I think of Mr. Posterley's addiction to ceremonial observances, and to matrimony, I cannot but

think of a sentence that fell from Mr. Durance one day, with reference to that division of our Church: he

called it:you frown! and I would only quote Mr. Durance to you in support of your purer form, as we hold

it to be:with the candles, the vestments, Confession, alas! he called it, `Rome and a wife.'"

Mr. Stuart Rem nodded an enforced assent: he testily dismissed mention of Mr. Durance, and resumed on Mr.

The good ladies now, with some of their curiosity appeased, considerately signified to him, that a young

The young maiden had in heart stuff to render such small gossip a hum of summer midges. She did not

imagine the dialogue concerned her in any way. She noticed Mr. Stuart Rem's attentive scrutiny of her from

time to time. She had no sensitiveness, hardly a mind for things about her. Tomorrow she was to see

Captain Dartrey. She dwelt on that prospect, for an escape from the meshes of a painful hourthe most

woeful of the hours she had yet knownpassed with Judith Marsett: which dragged her soul through a

weltering of the deeps, tossed her over and over, still did it with her ideas. It shocked her nevertheless to

perceive how much of the world's flayed life and harsh anatomy she had apprehended, and so coldly,

previous to Mrs. Marsett's lift of the veil in her story of herself: a skipping revelation, terrible enough to the

girl; whose comparison of the previously suspected things with the things now revealed imposed the thought

of her having been both a precocious and a callous young woman: a kind of "Delphica without the erudition,"

her mind phrased it airily over her chagrin.And the silence of Dudley proved him to have discovered his

error in choosing such a person: he was wise, and she thanked him. She had an envy of the

ignorantinnocents adored by the young man she cordially thanked for quitting her. She admired the white

coat of armour they wore, whether bestowed on them by their constitution or by prudence. For while

combating mankind now on Judith Marsett's behalf, personally she ran like a hare from the mere breath of an

association with the very minor sort of similar charges; ardently she desired the esteem of mankind; she was

Those wits of the virgin young, quickened to shrewdness by their budding sensesand however

vividlyrequire enlightenment of the audible and visible before their sterner feelings can be heated to break

them away from a blushful dread and force the mind to know. As much as the wilfully or naturally blunted,

the intelligently honest have to learn by touch: only, their understandings cannot meanwhile be so wholly

obtuse as our society's matron, acting to please the tastes of the civilized mana creature that is not

cleanwashed of the Turk in himbarbarously exacts. The signor aforesaid is puzzled to read the woman,

who is after all in his language; but when it comes to reading the maiden, she appears as a phosphorescent

hieroglyph to some speculative Egyptologer; and he insists upon distinct lines and characters; no variations, if

he is to have sense of surety. Many a young girl is misread by the amount she seems to know of our

construction, history, and dealings, when it is not more than her sincere ripeness of nature, that has gathered

the facts of life profuse about her, and prompts her through one or other of the instincts, often vanity, to show

them to be not entirely strange to her; or haply her filly nature is having a fling at the social harness of

hypocrisy. If you (it is usually through the length of ears of your Novelist that the privilege is yours) have

overheard queer communications passing between girls,and you must act the traitor eavesdropper or

Achilles masquerader to overhear so clearly,these, be assured, are not specially the signs of their

corruptness. Even the exceptionally cynical are chiefly to be accused of bad manners. Your Moralist is a

myopic preacher, when he stamps infamy on them, or on our later generation, for the kick they have at

grandmother decorum, because you do not or cannot conceal from them the grinning skeleton behind it.

Nesta once had dreams of her being loved: and she was to love in return for a love that excused her for loving

double, treble; as not her lover could love, she thought with grateful pride in the treasure she was to pour out

at his feet; as only one or two (and they were women) in the world had ever loved. Her notion of the passion

was parasitic: man the tree, woman the bine: but the bine was flame to enwind and to soar, serpent to defend,

immortal flowers to crown. The choice her parents had made for her in Dudley, behind the mystery she had

scent of, nipped her dream, and prepared her to meet, as it were, the fireside of a November day instead of

springing up and into the dawn's blue of full summer with swallows on wing. Her station in exile at the Wells

of the weariful rich, under the weight of the sullen secret, unenlivened by Dudley's courtship, subdued her to

the world's decrees; phrased thus: "I am not to be a heroine." The one golden edge to the view was, that she

would greatly please her father. Her dream of a love was put away like a botanist's pressed weed. But after

hearing Judith Marsett's wild sobs, it had no place in her cherishing. For, above all, the unhappy woman

protested love to have been the cause of her misery. She moaned of "her Ned;" of his goodness, his

deceitfulness, her trustfulness; his pride and the vileness of his friends; her longsuffering and her break

down of patience. It was done for the proof of her unworthiness of Nesta's friendship: that she might be

renounced, and embraced. She told the pathetic half of her story, to suit the gentle ear, whose critical

keenness was lost in compassion. How deep the compassion, mixed with the girl's native respect for the evil

fortuned, may be judged by her inaccessibility to a vulgar tang that she was aware of in the deluge of the

torrent, where Innocence and Ned and Love and a proud Family and that beast Worrell rolled together in

A darkness of thunder was on the girl. Although she was not one to shrink beneath it like the small bird of the

woods, she had to say within herself many times, "I shall see Captain Dartrey tomorrow," for a recovery and

a nerving. And with her thought of him, her tooth was at her underlip, she struggled abashed, in hesitation

over men's views of her sex, and how to bring a frank mind to meet him; to be sure of his not at heart

despising; until his character swam defined and bright across her scope. "He is good to women." Fragments

of conversation, principally her father's, had pictured Captain Dartrey to her most manfully tolerant toward a

Not two minutes had passed before she was at home with him. His words, his looks, revived her spirit of

romance, gave her the very landscapes, and new ones. Yes, he was her hero. But his manner made him also

an adored big brother, stamped splendid by the perils of life. He sat square, as if alert to rise, with an elbow

on a knee, and the readiest turn of head to speakers, the promptest of answers, eyes that were a brighter

accent to the mouth, so vividly did look accompany tone. He rallied her, chatted and laughed; pleased the

ladies by laughing at Colney Durance, and inspired her with happiness when he spoke of England:that

"Oh, Captain Dartrey, I do like to hear you say so," she cried; his voice was reassuring also in other

He volunteered, however, a sad admission, that England had certainly lost something of the great nation's

proper conception of Force: the meaning of it, virtue of it, and need for it. "She bleats for a lesson, and will

But if we have Captain Dartrey, we shall come through! So said the sparkle of Nesta's eyes.

They retired. Then she begged him to "tell her of her own dear mother." The news gave comfort, except for

the suspicion, that the dear mother was being worn by her entertaining so largely. "Papa is to blame," said

"A momentary strain. Your father has an idea of Parliament; one of the London boroughs."

Nesta sent a line of excuse to Mrs. Marsett, throwing in a fervent adjective for balm.

That fair person rode out with the troop under conduct of the hallowing squire of the stables, and passed by

Nesta on horseback beside Dartrey Fenellan at the steps of a huge hotel; issuing from which, pretty Mrs.

Blathenoy was about to mount. Mrs. Marsett looked ahead and coloured, but she could not restrain one look

at Nesta, that embraced her cavalier. Nesta waved hand to her, and nodded. Mrs. Marsett withdrew her eyes;

her doing so, silent though it was, resembled the drag back to sea of the shinglewave below her, such a

screaming of tattle she heard in the questions discernible through the attitude of the cavalier and of the lady,

who paused to stare, before the leap up in the saddle. `Who is she?what is she?how did you know

her?where does she come from?wears her hat on her brows!huge gauntlets out of style!shady!

shady! shady!' And as always during her nervous tumults, the name of Worrell made diapason of that

execrable uproar. Her hat on her brows had an air of dash, defying a world it could win, as Ned well knew.

But she scanned her gauntlets disapprovingly. This town, we are glad to think, has a bright repute for

gloveshops. And Mrs. Marsett could applaud herself for sparing Ned's money; she had mended her gloves,

if they were in the fashion.But how does the money come? Hark at that lady and that gentleman

questioning Miss Radnor of everything, everything in the world about her! Not a word do they get from Miss

Radnor. And it makes them the more inquisitive. Idle rich people, comfortably fenced round, are so

inquisitive! And Mrs. Marsett, loving Nesta for the notice of her, maddened by the sting of tongues it was

causing, heard the wash of the beach, without consciousness of analogies, but with a body ready to jump out

She was all impulse; a shifty piece of unmercenary stratagem occasionally directing it. Arrived at her

lodgings, she wrote to Nesta: "I entreat you not to notice me, if you pass me on the road again. Let me drop,

never mind how low I go. I was born to be wretched. A line from you, just a line now and then, only to show

me I am not forgotten. I have had a beautiful dream. I am not bad in reality; I love goodness, I know. I cling

to the thought of you, as my rescue, I declare. Please, let me hear: if it's not more than `good day' and your

COULD there be confidences on the subject of Mrs. Marsett with Captain Dartrey?Nesta timidly

questioned her heart: she knocked at an iron door shut upon a thing alive. The very asking froze her, almost

to stopping her throbs of pity for the woman. With Captain Dartrey, if with any one; but with no one. Not

with her mother even. Toward her mother, she felt guilty of knowing. Her mother had a horror of that curtain.

Nesta had seen it, and had taken her impressions: she, too, shrank from it; the more when impelled to draw

near it. Louise de Seilles would have been another self; Louise was away; when to return, the dear friend

could not state. Speaking in her ear, would have been possible; the theme precluded writing.

It was ponderous combustible new knowledge of life for a girl to hold unaided. In the presence of the simple

silvery ladies Dorothea and Virginia, she had qualms, as if she were breaking out in spots before them. The

ladies fancied, that Mr. Stuart Rem had hinted to them oddly of the girl; and that he might have meant, she

appeared a little too cognizant of poor Mr. Abram Posterley's maladyas girls, in these terrible days, only

too frequently, too brazenly, are. They discoursed to her of the degeneracy of the manners, nay, the morals of

young Englishwomen, once patterns! They sketched the young English gentlewoman of their time; indeed a

beauty; with round red cheeks, and rounded open eyes, and a demure shut mouth, a puppet's divine

ignorance; inoffensive in the highest degree, rightly worshipped. They were earnest, and Nesta struck at

They were good: they were the ideal women of our country; which demands if it be but the semblance of the

sureness of stationary excellence; such as we have in S�vres and Dresden, polished bright and smooth as ever

by the morning's flick of a duster; perhaps in danger of accidentsaccidents must be kept away; but

enviable, admirable, we think, when we are not thinking of seed sown or help given to the generations to

follow. Nesta both envied and admired; she revered them; yet her sharp intelligence, larger in the extended

boundary of thought coming of strange crimsonlighted new knowledge, discerned in a dimness what blest

conditions had fixed them on their beautiful barren eminence. Without challenging it, she had a rebellious

rush of sympathy for our evilfortuned of the world; the creatures in the battle, the wounded, trodden, mud

She had the sympathy, nevertheless, and renewing and increasing with the pulsations of a compassion that

she took for her reflective survey. The next time she saw Dartrey Fenellan, she was assured of him, as being

the man who might be spoken to; and by a woman: though not by a girl; not spoken to by her. The throb of

the impulse precipitating speech subsided to a dumb yearning. He noticed her look: he was unaware of the

human sun in the girl's eyes taking an image of him for permanent habitation in her breast. That face of his,

so clearly lined, quick, firm, with the blue smile on it like the gleam of a sword coming out of sheath, did not

mean hardness, she could have vowed. O that some woman, other than the unhappy woman herself, would

speak the words denied to a girl! He was the man who would hearken and help. Essential immediate help was

to be given besides the noble benevolence of mind. Novel ideas of manliness and the world's need for it were

printed on her understanding. For what could women do in aid of a good cause! She fawned: she deemed

herself very despicably her hero's inferior. The thought of him enclosed her. In a prison, the gaoler is a

demiGodhued bright or black, as it may be; and, by the present arrangement between the sexes, she,

whom the world allowed not to have an intimation from eye or ear, or from nature's bloodripeness in

commune with them, of certain matters, which it suffers to be notorious, necessarily directed her appeal

almost in worship to the man, who was the one man endowed to relieve, and who locked her mouth for

Thus was she, too, being put into her woman's harness of the bit and the blinkers, and taught to know herself

for the weak thing, the gentle parasite, which the fiction of our civilization expects her, caressingly and

contemptuously, to become in the active, while it is exacted of herO Comedy of Clowns!that in the

passive she be a rockfortress impregnable, not to speak of magically encircled. She must also have her

feelings; she must not be an unnatural creature. And she must have a sufficient intelligence; for her stupidity

does not flatter the possessing man. It is not an organic growth that he desires in his mate, but a happy

This burning Nesta, Victor's daughter, tempered by Nataly's milder blood, was a girl in whom the hard shocks

of the knowledge of life, perforce of the hardness upon pure metal, left a strengthening for generous

imagination. She did not sit to brood on her injured senses or set them through speculation touching heat;

they were taken up and consumed by the fire of her mind. Nor had she leisure for the abhorrences, in a heart

all flowing to give aid, and uplift and restore. Self was as urgent in her as in most of the young; but the gift of

humour, which had previously diverted it, was now the quick feeling for her sisterhood, through the one

piteous example she knew; and broadening it, through her insurgent abasement on their behalf, which was her

scourged pride of sex. She but faintly thought of blaming the men whom her soul besought for justice, for

common kindness, to women. There was the danger, that her aroused young ignorance would charge the

whole of the misery about and abroad upon the stronger of those two: and another danger, that the vision of

the facts below the surface would discolour and disorder her views of existence. But she loved, she sprang to,

the lighted world; and she had figures of male friends, to which to cling; and they helped in animating

glorious historical figures on the world's libraryshelves or under yet palpitating earth. Promise of a steady

balance of her nature, too, was shown in the absence of any irritable urgency to be doing, when her bosom

bled to help. Beyond the resolve, that she would not abandon the woman who had made confession to her,

she formed no conscious resolutions. Far ahead down her journey of the years to come, she did see muffled

things she might hope and would strive to do. They were chrysalis shapes. Above all, she flew her blind

quickened heart on the wings of an imaginative force; and those of the young who can do that, are in their

blood incorruptible by dark knowledge, irradiated under darkness in the mind. Let but the throb be kept for

Victor descended on his marine London to embrace his girl, full of regrets at Fredi's absence from the great

whirl `overhead,' as places of multitudinous assembly, where he shone, always appeared to him. But it was

not to last long; she would soon be on the surface again! At the first clasp of her, he chirped some bars of her

song. He challenged her to duet before the good ladies, and she kindled, she was caught up by his gaiety,

wondering at herself; faintly aware of her not being spontaneous. And she made her father laugh, just in the

old way; and looked at herself in his laughter, with the thought, that she could not have become so changed;

by which the girl was helped to jump to her humour. Victor turned his full front to Dorothea and Virginia,

one sunny beam of delight: and although it was Mr. Stuart Rem who was naughty Nesta's victim, and

although it seemed a trespass on her part to speak in such a manner of a clerical gentleman, they were seized;

they were the opposite partners of a laughing quadrille, lasting till they were tired out.

Victor had asked his girl, if she sang on a Sunday. The ladies remembered, that she had put the question for

Nesta shook head: "It was not what he said, papa; it was his look. His duty compelled him, though he loves

music. He had the look of a Patriarch putting his handmaiden away into the desert."

Dorothea and Virginia, in spite of protests within, laughed to streams. They recollected the look; she had

Victor conjured up a day when this darling Fredi, a child, stood before a famous picture in the Brera, at

Milan: when he and her mother noticed the child's very studious graveness; and they had talked of it; he

remarking, that she disapproved of the Patriarch; and Nataly, that she was taken with Hagar's face.

He paused after the cool reply. She had no mournful gaze at all; but in the depths of the clear eyes he knew so

well, there was a coil of something animate, whatever it might be. And twice she drew a heavy breath.

He mentioned it in London. Nataly telegraphed at night for her girl to meet her next day at Dartrey's hotel.

Their meeting was incomprehensibly joyless to the hearts of each, though it was desired, and had long been

desired, and mother was mother, daughter daughter, without diminution of love between them. They held

hands, they kissed and clasped, they showered their tender phrases with full warm truth, and looked into eyes

and surely saw one another. But the heart of each was in a battle of its own, taking wounds or crying for

supports. Whether to speak to her girl at once, despite the now vehement contrary counsel of Victor, was

Nataly's deliberation, under the thought of the young creature's perplexity in not seeing her at the house of the

Duvidney ladies: while Nesta conjured in a flash the past impressions of her mother's shrinking distaste from

any such hectic themes as this which burdened and absorbed her; and she was almost joining to it, through

sympathy with any thought or feeling of one in whom she had such pride; she had the shudder of revulsion.

Further, Nataly put on rather cravenly an air of distress, or she half designingly permitted her trouble to be

seen, by way of affecting her girl's recollection when the confession was to come, that Nesta might then

understand her to have been restrained from speaking, not evasive of her duty. The look was interpreted by

Nesta as belonging to the social annoyances dating, in her calendar, from Creckholt, apprehensively dreaded

at Lakelands. She hinted asking, and her mother nodded; not untruthfully; but she put on a briskness after the

Her dear Skepsey was coming down to her for a holiday, she was glad to hear. Of Dudley, there was no word.

Nataly shunned his name, with a superstitious dread lest any mention of him should renew pretensions that

she hoped, and now supposed, were quite withdrawn. So she had told poor Mr. Barmby only yesterday, at his

humble request to know. He had seen Dudley on the pantiles, walking with a young lady, he said. And "he

feared," he said; using a pardonable commonplace of deceit. Her compassion accounted for the "fear" which

was the wish, and caused her not to think it particularly strange, that he should imagine Dudley to have

quitted the field. Now that a disengaged Dartrey Fenellan was at hand, poor Mr. Barmby could have no

Dartrey came to her room by appointment. She wanted to see him alone, and he informed her, that Mrs.

Blathenoy was in the hotel, and would certainly receive and amuse Nesta for any length of time.

"I will take her up," said Nataly, and rose, and she sat immediately, and fluttered a hand at her breast. She

He returned, saying: "There's a lift in the hotel. Do the stairs affect you at all?"

She fenced his sharp look. "Laziness, I fancy; age is coming on. How is it Mrs. Blathenoy is here?"

"You can bear to hear it. Her husband knows the story. He has a grudge . . . commercial reasons. I fancy it is,

that Victor stood against his paper at the table of the Bank. Blathenoy vowed blow for blow. But I think the

Nataly spied at Dudley's behaviour, and said: "That will wear away. Is Mr. Blathenoy much here?"

"Yes: and she is doing you a service, at your request; and you occasionally reward her with thanks; and she

Dartrey blew his poohpooh on feminine suspicions. "There's very little left of the Don Amoroso in me.

"They do:like the seabirds. And what do you say to me, Dartrey?I can confess it: I am one of them: I

love you. When last you left England, I kissed your hand. It was because of your manly heart in that stone

figure. I kept from crying: you used to scorn us English for the `whimpering fits' you said we enjoy and must

havein books, if we can't get them up for ourselves. I could have prayed to have you as brother or son. I

love my Victor the better for his love of you. Oh!poor soul!how he is perverted since that building of

Lakelands! He cannot take soundings of the things he does. Formerly he confided in me, in all things: now

not one;I am the chief person to deceive. If only he had waited! We are in a network of intrigues and

schemes, every artifice, in Londontempting one to hate simple worthy people, who naturally have their

views, and see me an impostor, and tolerate me, fascinated by him:or bribed it has to be said. There are

ways of bribing. I trust he may not have in the end to pay too heavily for succeeding. He seems a man pushed

by Destiny; not irresponsible, but less responsible than most. He is desperately tempted by his never failing.

Whatever he does! . . . it is true! And it sets me thinking of those who have never had an ailment, up to a

certain age, when the killing blow comes. Latterly I have seen into him: I never did before. Had I been

stronger, I might have saved, or averted. . . . But, you will say, the stronger woman would not have occupied

my place. I must have been blind too. I did not see, that his nature shrinks from the thing it calls up. He

dreads the exposure he courtsor has to combat with all his powers. It has been a revelation to me of

himlife as well. Nothing stops him. Now it is Parliamenta vacant London Borough. He counts on a

Nataly concluded: "There: it has done me some good to speak. I feel so base." She breathed heavily.

Dartrey took her hand and bent his lips to it. "Happy the woman who has not more to speak! How long will

"You will watch over her, Dartrey? She staysher father wishesup to . . . ah! We can hardly be in such

extreme peril. He has her doctor, her lawyer, and her butlera favourite servantto check, and influence,

her. Sheyou know who it is! does not, I am now convinced, mean persecution. She was never a

meanminded woman. Oh! I could wish she were. They say she is going. Then I am to be made an `honest

woman of.' Victor wants Nesta, now that she is away, to stay until . . . You understand. He feels she is safe

from any possible kind of harm with those good ladies. And I feel she is the safer for having you near.

Otherwise, how I should pray to have you with us! Daily I have to pass through, well, something like the

ordeal of the redhot ploughsharesand without the innocence, dear friend! But it's best that my girl should

not have to be doing the same; though she would have the innocence. But she writhes under any shadow of a

blot. And for her to learn the things that are in the world, through her mother's history!and led to know it

by the falling away of friends, or say, acquaintances! However ignorant at present, she learns from a mere

nothing. I dread! . . . In a moment, she is a blaze of light. There have been occurrences. Only Victor could

have overcome them! I had to think it better for my girl, that she was absent. We are in such a whirl up there!

So I work round again to `how long?' and the picture of myself counting the breaths of a dying woman. The

"Battle, battle, battle;for all of us, in every position!" said Dartrey, sharply, to clip a softness: "except when

one's attending on an invalid uncle. Then it's peace; rather like extinction. And I can't be crying for the end

either. I bite my moustache and tap foot on the floor, out of his hearing; make believe I'm patient. Now I'll

Mrs. Blathenoy came down with an arm on Nesta's shoulder. She held a telegram, and said to Nataly: "What

can this mean? It's from my husband; he puts `Jacob:' my husband's Christian name:so like my husband,

where there's no concealment! Therehe says: `Down tonight else pack ready start to morrow.' Can it

It had that signification to Nataly's understanding. At the same time, the pretty little woman's absurd lisping

repetition of `my husband' did not seem without design to inflict the wound it caused.

In reality, it was not malicious; it came of the bewitchment of a silly tongue by her knowledge of the secret to

be controlled: and after contrasting her fortunes with Nataly's, on her way downstairs, she had comforted

herself by saying, that at least she had a husband. She was not aware that she dealt a hurt until she had found

a small consolation in the indulgence: for Captain Dartrey Fenellan admired this commanding figure of a

woman, who could not legally say that which the woman he admired less, if at all, legally could say.

Mrs. Blathenoy resented her unbefitting queenly style. For this reason, she abstained from an intended

leading up to mention of the `singularlooking lady' seen riding with Miss Radnor more than once; and as to

whom, Miss Radnor (for one gives her the name) had not just now, when questioned, spoken very clearly. So

And really it was a pity, Mrs. Blathenoy said to Dartrey subsequently; finding him colder than before Mrs.

Radnor's visit; it was a pity, because a young woman in Miss Radnor's position should not by any possibility

She was denied the petulant satisfaction of rousing the championship bitter to her. Dartrey would not deliver

an opinion on Miss Radnor's conduct. He declined, moreover, to assist in elucidating the telegram by

"looking here," and poring over the lines beside a bloomy cheek. He was petulantly whipped on the arm with

her glove, and pouted at. And it was thenand then only or chiefly through Nataly's recent allusionthat

the man of honour had his quakings in view of the quagmire, where he was planted on an exceedingly narrow

causeway, not of the firmest. For she was a pretty little woman, one of the prize gifts of the present education

of women to the men who are for having them quiescent domestic patterns; and her artificial ingenuousness

or candid frivolities came to her by nature to kindle the nature of the gentleman on the other bank of the

stream, and witch him to the plunge, so greatly mutually regretted after taken: an old duet to the moon.

Dartrey escaped to the Club, where he had a friend. The friend was Colonel Sudley, one of the modern

studious officers, not in good esteem with the authorities. He had not forgiven Dartrey for the

intemperateness which cut off a brilliant soldier from the service. He was reduced to acknowledge, however,

that there was a sparkling defence for him to reply with, in the shape of a fortune gained: and where we have

a Society forcing us to live up to an expensive level, very trying to a soldier's income, a fortune gained will

offer excuses for misconduct short of disloyal or illegal. They talked of the state of the Army: we are moving.

True, and at the last Review, the `march past' was performed before a mounted generalissimo profoundly

asleep, head on breast. Our English military `moving' may now be likened to Somnolency on Horseback.

"Oh, come, no rancour," said the colonel; "you know he's a kind old boy at heart; nowhere a more

"There you touch home. Mother Goose can't imagine the need for defence until a hand's at her feathers."

They were in a laughing wrangle when two acquaintances of the colonel's came near. One of them recognized

Dartrey. He changed a prickly subject to one that is generally as acceptable to the servants of Mars. His

companion said: "Who is the girl out with Judith Marsett?" He flavoured eulogies of the girl's good looks in

easy garrison English. She was praised for sitting her horse well. One had met her on the parade, in the

afternoon, walking with Mrs. Marsett. Colonel Sudley had seen them on horseback. He remarked to Dartrey:

"And by the way, you're a clean stretch ahead of us. I've seen you go by these windows, with the young lady

Strolling to his quarters along the breezy parade at night, he proposed to himself, that he would breathe an

immediate caution to Nesta. How had she come to know this Mrs. Marsett? But he was more seriously

thinking of what Colney Durance called `The Mustard Plaster;' the satirist's phrase for warm relations with a

married fair one: and Dartrey, clear of any design to have it at his breast, was beginning to take intimations of

pricks and burns. They are an almost positive cure of inflammatory internal conditions. They were really hard

The hour was nigh midnight. As he entered his hotel, the porter ran off to the desk in his box, and brought

him a note, saying, that a lady had left it at halfpast nine.Left it? Then the lady could not be the

alarming lady. He was relieved. The words of the letter were cabalistic; these, beneath underlined address:

"I beg you to call on me, if I do not see you this evening. It is urgent; you will excuse me when I explain. Not

late to morrow. I am sure you will not fail to come. I could write what would be certain to bring you. I dare

BY the very earliest of the trains shot away to light and briny air from London's November gloom, which

knows the morning through increase of gasjets, little Skepsey was hurried over suburban chimneys, in his

friendly thirdclass carriage; where we have reminders of ancient pastoral times peculiar to our country, as it

may chance; but where a man may speak to his neighbour right off without being deemed offensive. That is

homely. A social fellow knitting closely to his fellows when he meets them, enjoys it, even at the cost of

uncushioned seats: he can, if imps are in him, merryandrew as much as he pleases; detested punctilio does not

reign there; he can proselytize for the soul's welfare; decry or uphold the national drink; advertize a

commercial Firm deriving prosperity from the favour of the multitude; exhort to patriotism. All is accepted.

Politeness is the rule, according to Skepsey's experience of the Southern part of the thirdclass kingdom. And

it is as well to mark the divisions, for the better knowledge of our countrymen. The North requires volumes to

The hardgrained old piratestock Northward has built the land, and is to the front when we are at our epic

work. Meanwhile it gets us a blowzy character, by shouldering roughly among the children of civilization.

Skepsey, journeying one late afternoon up a Kentish line, had, in both senses of the word, encountered a

longlimbed navvy; an intoxicated, he was compelled by his manly modesty to desire to think; whose loathly

talk, forced upon the hearing of a decent old woman opposite him, passed baboonish behaviour; so much so,

that Skepsey civilly intervened; subsequently inviting him to leave the carriage and receive a lesson at the

station they were nearing. Upon his promising faithfully, that it should be a true and telling lesson, the navvy

requested this pygmy spark to flick his cheek, merely to show he meant war in due sincerity; and he as

faithfully, all honour, promising not to let it bring about a breakage of the laws of the Company, Skepsey

Skepsey alluded to the incident, for an example of the lamentable deficiency in science betrayed by most of

our strong men when put to it; and the bitter thought, that he could count well nigh to a certainty on the total

absence of science in the longarmed navvy, whose fist on his nose might have been as the magnet of a pin,

was chief among his reminiscences after the bout, destroying pleasure for the lover of Old England's might.

One blow would have sent Skepsey travelling. He was not seriously struck once. They parted, shaking hands;

the navvy confessing himself to have "drunk a drop;" and that perhaps accounted for his having been "topped

by a dot on him." He declined to make oath never to repeat his offence; but said, sending his vanquisher to

the deuce, with an amicable push at his shoulder, "Damned if I ever forget five foot five stretched six foot

flat!" Skepsey counted his feet some small amount higher; but our hearty rovers' sons have their ballad moods

when giving or taking a thrashing. One of the thirdclass passengers, a lad of twenty, became Skepsey's

pupil, and turned out clever with the gloves and was persuaded to enter the militia, and grew soon to be a

corporal. Thus there was profit of the affair, though the navvy sank out of sight. Let us hope and pray he will

not insult the hearing of females again. If only females knew how necessary it is, for their sakes, to be able to

give a lesson now and then! Ladies are positively opposed. And Judges too, who dress so like them. The

manhood of our country is kept down, in consequence. Mr. Durance was right, when he said something about

the state of war being wanted to weld our races together: and yet we are always praying for the state of peace,

which causes cracks and gaps among us! Was that what he meant by illogical? It seemed to Skepseyoddly,

considering his inferior estimate of the value of the fair sexthat a young woman with whom he had

recently made acquaintance; and who was in Brighton now, upon missionary work; a member of the `Army,'

an officer of advancing rank, Matilda Pridden, by name; was nearer to the secret of the right course of

conduct for individual citizens and the entire country than any gentleman he knew.

Yes, nearer to it than his master was! Thinking of Mr. Victor Radnor, Skepsey fetched a sigh. He had

knocked at his master's door at the office one day, and imagining the call to enter, had done so, and had seen

a thing he could not expunge. Lady Grace Halley was there. From matters he gathered, Skepsey guessed her

to be working for his master among the great folks, as he did with Jarniman, and Mr. Fenellan with Mr.

Carling. But is it usual, he asked himselfhis natural veneration framing the rebuke to his master thusto

repay the services of a lady so warmly?We have all of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement of

our superiors as well as our equals; and the little man, notwithstanding a servant's bounden submissiveness,

was forced to hear the judicial pronouncement upon his master's behaviour. His master had, at the same time,

been saying most weighty kind words more and more of late: one thing:that, if he gave all he had to his

fellows, and did all he could, he should still be in their debt. And he was a very wealthy gentleman. What are

we to think? The ways of our superiors are wonderful. We do them homage: still we feel, we painfully feel,

we are beginning to worship elsewhere. It is the pain of a detachment of the very roots of our seaweed heart

from a rock. Mr. Victor Radnor was an honour to his country. Skepsey did not place the name of Matilda

Pridden beside it or in any way compare two such entirely different persons. At the same time and most

earnestly, while dreading to hear, he desired to have Matilda Pridden's opinion of the case distressing him. He

never could hear it, because he could never be allowed to expound the case to her. Skepsey sighed again: he

as much as uttered: Oh, if we had a few thousands like her!But what if we do have them? They won't

marry! There they are, all that the country requires in wives and mothers; and like Miss Priscilla Graves, they

He looked through sad thoughts across the benches of the compartments to the farther end of the carriage,

where sat the Rev. Septimus Barmby, looking at him through a meditation as obscure if not so mournful. Few

are the thirdclass passengers outward at that early hour in the winter season, and Skepsey's gymnastics to

get beside the Rev. Septimus were unimpeded; though a tightpacked carriage of us poor journaliers would

not have obstructed them with as much as a sneer. Mr. Barmby and Skepsey greeted. The latter said, he had a

holiday, to pay a visit to Miss Nesta. The former said, he hoped he should see Miss Nesta. Skepsey then

rapidly brought the conversation to a point where Matilda Pridden was comprised. He discoursed of the

`Army' and her position in the Army, giving instances of her bravery, the devotion shown by her to the cause

of morality, in all its forms. Mr. Barmby had his fortunes in his hands at the moment, he could not lend an

attentive ear; and he disliked this Army, the title it had taken, and the mixing of women and men in its ranks;

not to speak of a presumption in its proceedings, and the public marching and singing. Moreover, he enjoyed

his one or two permissible glasses: he doubted that the Chiefs of the Army had common benevolence for the

inoffensive pipe. But the cause of morality was precious to him; morality and a fit of softness, and the union

of the happiest contrast of voices, had set him for a short while, before the dawn of Nesta's day, hankering

after Priscilla Graves. Skepsey's narrative of Matilda Pridden's work down at the East of London, was

effective; it had the ring to thrill a responsive chord in Mr. Barmby, who mused on London's East, and

martyrly service there. His present expectations were of a very different sort; but a beautiful bride, bringing

us wealth, is no misleading beam, if we direct the riches rightly. Septimus, a solitary minister in those grisly

haunts of the misery breeding vice, must needs accomplish less than a Septimus the husband of one of

England's chief heiresses:only not the most brilliant, owing to circumstances known to the Rev. Groseman

Buttermore: strangely, and opportunely, revealed: for her exceeding benefit, it may be hoped. She is no

longer the ignorant girl, to reject the protecting hand of one whose cloth is the best of cloaking. A glance at

Dudley Sowerby's defection, assures our worldly wisdom too, that now is the time to sue.

Several times while Mr. Barmby made thus his pudding of the desires of the flesh and the spirit, Skepsey's

tales of Matilda Pridden's heroism caught his attention. He liked her deeds; he disliked the position in which

the young woman placed herself to perform them; and he said so. Women are to be women, he said.

Mr. Barmby was launching forth: Plenty of men!His mouth was blocked by the reflection, that we count

the men on our fingers; often are we, as it were, an episcopal thumb surveying scarce that number of

followers! He diverged to censure of the marchings and the streetsinging: the impediment to traffic, the

annoyance to a finely musical ear. He disapproved altogether of Matilda Pridden's military display,

"Not long, sir. She has gone through trouble. She believes very strongly in the will:If I will this, if I will

that, and it is the right will, not wickedness, it is doneas good as done; and force is quite superfluous. In

"It would seem, that England is becoming Americanized!" exclaimed the Conservative in Mr. Barmby.

Almost he groaned; and his gaze was fishlike in vacancy, on hearing the little man speak of the present

intrepid forwardness of the sex to be publicly doing. It is for men the most indigestible fact of our century:

one that by contrast throws an overearthly holiness on our decorous dutiful mothers, who contentedly worked

Skepsey drew forth a papercovered shillingbook: a translation from the French, under a yelling title of

savage hate of Old England and cannibal glee at her doom. Mr. Barmby dropped his eyelashes on it, without

comment; nor did he reply to Skepsey's forlorn remark: "We let them think they could do it!"

Behold the downs. Breakfast is behind them. Miss Radnor likewise: if the poor child has a name. We propose

to supply the deficiency. She does not declare war upon tobacco. She has a cultured and a beautiful voice. We

abstain from enlarging on the charms of her person. She has resources, which representatives of a rival creed

"Skepsey, you have your quarters at the house of Miss Radnor's relatives?" said Mr. Barmby, as they

emerged from tunnelled chalk. "Mention, that I think of calling in the course of the day."

A biscuit had been their breakfast without a name. They parted at the station, roused by the smell of salt to

bestow a more legitimate title on the day's restorative beginning. Down the hill, along by the shops, and

Skepsey, in sight of Miss Nesta's terrace, considered it still an early hour for a visitor; so, to have the sea

about him, he paid piermoney, and hurried against the briny wings of a Southwester; green waves, curls of

foam, flecks of silver, under lowflying greydark cloudcurtains shaken to a rift, where at one shot the sun

had a line of Nere�ds nodding, laughing, sparkling to him. Skepsey enjoyed it, at the back of thoughts military

and naval. Visible sea, this girdle of Britain, inspired him to exultations in reverence. He wished Mr. Durance

could behold it now and have such a breastful. He was wishing he knew a song of Britain and sea, rather

fancying Mr. Durance to be in some way a bar to patriotic poetical recollection, when he saw his Captain

Dartrey mounting steps out of an iron anatomy of the pier, and looking like a razor off a strap.

"Just a plunge and a dozen strokes," Dartrey said; "and you'll come to my hotel and give me ten minutes of

the `recreation;' and if you don't come willingly, I shall insult your country."

"It would upset his bumboat of epigrams. He rises at ten o'clock to a queasy breakfast by candlelight, and

proceeds to composition. His picture of the country is a portrait of himself by the artist."

"There are lots to flatter her, Skepsey! A drilling can't do her harm. You're down to see Miss Nesta. Ladies

don't receive quite so early. And have you breakfasted? Come on with me quick." Dartrey led him on, saying:

"You have an eye at my stick. It was a legacy to me, by word of mouth, from a seaman of a ship I sailed in,

who thought I had done him a service; and he died after all. He fell overboard drunk. He perished of the

villain stuff. One of his messmates handed me the stick in Cape Town, sworn to deliver it. A good knot to

grasp; and it's flexible and strong; stick or rattan, whichever you please; it gives point or caresses the

shoulder; there's no break in it, whack as you may. They call it a Demerara supplejack. I'll leave it to you."

Skepsey declared his intention to be the first to depart. He tried the temper of the stick, bent it a bit, and

Perhaps for the reason, that it was not a handsome instrument for display on fashionable promenades, Dartrey

chose it among his collection by preference; as ugly dogs of a known fidelity are chosen for companions. The

Demerara supple jack surpasses bulldogs in its fashion of assisting the master; for when once at it, the

clownishlooking thing reflects upon him creditably, by developing a refined courtliness of style, while in no

way showing a diminution of jolly ardour for the fray. It will deal you the stroke of a bludgeon with the

playfulness of a cane. It bears resemblance to those accomplished natural actors, who conversationally

present a dramatic situation in two or three spontaneous flourishes, and are themselves again, men of the

Skepsey handed it back. He spoke of a new French rifle. He mentioned, in the form of query for no answer,

the translation of the barking little volume he had shown to Mr. Barmby: he slapped at his breastpocket,

where it was. Not a ship was on the sealine; and he seemed to deplore that vacancy.

"But it tells both ways," Dartrey said. "We don't want to be hectoring in the Channel. All we want, is to be

sure of our power, so as not to go hunting and fawning for alliances. Up along that terrace Miss Nesta lives.

Skepsey temporized, to get his national defences, by pleading the country's love of peace.

"Then you giveup your portion of the gains of waran awful disgorgement," said Dartrey. "If you are

really for peace, you toss all your spare bones to the wardogs. Otherwise, Quakerly preaching is taken for

"I'm afraid we are illogical, sir," said Skepsey, adopting one of the charges of Mr. Durance, to elude the

A little note lay on his breakfasttable. His invalid uncle's valet gave the morning's report of the night.

The note was from Mrs. Blathenoy: she begged Captain Dartrey, in double underlinings of her brief words, to

She was excited, and showed a bosom compressed to explode: she had been weeping. "My husband is off. He

"Oh, you cold creature! You knowyou see: I can't conceal. And you tell me to go. `Go'! Gracious heavens!

I've no claim on you; I haven't been able to do much; I would havenever mind! believe me or not. And

now I'm to go: on the spot, I suppose. You've seen the man I'm to go to, too. I would bear it, if it were not

away from . . . out of sight of I'm a fool of a woman, I know. There's frankness for you! and I could

declare you're saying `impudence' in your heartor what you have for one. Have you one?"

"My dear soul, it's a flint. So just think of your duty." Dartrey played the horrid part of executioner with some

"And never a greater fool than when I sent for you to see such a face as I'm showing!" she cried, with lips that

twitched and fingers that plucked at her belt. "But you might feel my hatred of being tied todragged about

over the Continent by that . . . perhaps you think a woman is not sensible of vulgarity in her husband! I'm

bothering you? I don't say I have the slightest claim. You never made love to me, never! Never so much as

pressed my hand or looked. Others haveas much as I let them. And before I saw you, I had not an idea of

"No other course. I don't see one. What have I been dreaming of! Usually a woman feeling . . ." she struck at

her breast, "has had a soft word in her ear. `Go'! I don't blame you, Captain Dartrey. At least, you're not the

man to punish a woman for stripping herself, as I've done. I call myself a foolI'm a lunatic. Trust me with

She grasped the hand, and shut her eyes to make a long age of the holding on to him. "Oh, you dear dear

fellow!don't think me unwomanly; I must tell you now: I am naked and can't disguise. I see you are

icefeel: and if you were different, I might be. You won't be hurt by hearing you've made yourself dear to

mewithout meaning to, I know! It began that day at Lakelands; I fell in love with you the very first minute

I set eyes on you. There's a confession for a woman to make!and a married woman! I'm married, and I no

more feel allegiance, as they call it, than if there never had been a ceremony and no Jacob Blathenoy was in

existence. And why I should go to him! But you shan't be troubled. I did not begin to live, as a woman,

before I met you. I can speak all this to you because we women can't be deceived in thatyou are one of

"I hope so," Dartrey said, and his mouth hardened as nature's electricity shot sparks into him from the touch

"No, not yet: I will soon let it drop," said she, and she was just then thrillingly pretty; she caressed the hand,

placing it at her throat and moving her chin on it, as women fondle birds. "I am positively to go, then?"

"It is really a flint that beats here?" she said, and with a shyness in adventurousness, she struck the point of

her forefinger on the rib. "Fancy me in love with a flint! And running to be dutiful to a Jacob Blathenoy, at

my flint's command. I'm half in love with doing what I hate, because this cold thing here bids me do it. I

believe I married for money, and now it looks as if I were to have my bargain with poverty to bless it."

"There I may help," said Dartrey, relieved at sight of a loophole, to spring to some initiative out of the

paralysis cast on him by a pretty little woman's rending of her veil. A man of honour alone with a woman

who has tossed concealment to the winds, is a riddled target indeed: he is tempted to the peril of cajoling, that

he may escape from the torment and the ridicule; he is tempted to sigh for the gallant spirit of his naughty

adolescence. "Come to mewill you?apply to me, if there's ever any need. I happen to have money. And

She groaned: "Don't! I'm sure, and I thought it from the first, you're one of the good men, and the woman

who meets you is lucky, and wretched, and so she ought to be! Only to you should I! . . . do believe that! I

"Silly, silly! Don't you see you have to do with a flint! I've gone through fire. And if I were in love with you,

"Perfectly true; but I like you; and if we're to be hand in hand, in the time to come, you must walk firm at

The riddled target kicked. Dartrey contrasted Jacob Blathenoy with the fair wife, and commiseratingly

exonerated her; he lashed at himself for continuing to be in this absurdest of postures, and not absolutely

"Well!" she sighed, "I feel I'm doomed to go famished through life. There's never to be such a thing as love,

for me! I can't tell youno woman could: though you'll say I've told enough. I shall burn with shame when I

think of it. I could go on my knees to have your arms round me once. I could kill myself for saying it!I

should feel that I had one moment of real life.I know I ought to admire you. They say a woman hates if

she's refused. I can't: I wish I were able to. I could have helped the Radnors better by staying here and

threatening never to go to him unless he swore not to do them injury. He's revengeful. Just as you like. You

Dartrey kissed the hand. She kissed the mark of his lips. He got himself away, by promising to see her to the

train for Paris. Outside her door, he was met by the reflection, coming as a thing external, that he might

veraciously and successfully have pleaded a passionate hunger for breakfast: nay, that he would have done

so, if he had been downright in earnest. For she had the prettiness to cast a spell; a certain curve at the lips, a

fluttering droop of the eyelids, a corner of the eye, that led long distances away to forests and nests. This little

woman had the rosypeeping June bud's plumpness. What of the man who refused to kiss her once? Cold

antecedent immersion had to be thanked; and stringent vacuity; perhaps a spotting ogreimage of her

possessor. Some sense of rightdoing also, we hope. Dartrey angrily attributed his good conduct to the lowest

motives. He went so far as to accuse himself of having forborne to speak of breakfast, from a sort of

fascinated respect for the pitch of a situation that he despised and detested. Then again, when beginning to

eat, his good conduct drew on him a chorus of the jeers of all the martial comrades he had known. But he

owned he would have had less excuse than they, had he taken advantage of a woman's inability, at a weak

moment, to protect herself: or rather, if he had not behaved in a manner to protect her from herself. He

thought of his buried wife, and the noble in the base of that poor soul; needing constantly a present helper, for

the nobler to conquer. Be true man with a woman, she must be viler than the devil has yet made one, if she

does not follow a strong right lead:but be patient, of course. And the word patience here means more than

most men contain. Certainly a man like Jacob Blathenoy was a mouthful for any woman: and he had bought

his wife, he deserved no pity. Not? Probably not. That view, however, is unwholesome and opens on slides.

Pity of his wife, too, gets to be fervidly active with her portrait, fetches her breath about us. As for

condemnation of the poor little woman, her case was not unexampled, though the sudden flare of it startled

rather. Mrs. Victor could read men and women closely. Yes, and Victor, when he schemedbut Dartrey

declined to be throwing blame right or left. More than by his breakfast, and in a preferable direction, he was

"The right sort of girl for you to know, Skepsey," he said. "The best in life is a good woman."

"They have their fits now and then, and they're soon over and forgotten," Dartrey said. "The worst of it is,

After the morning's visit to his uncle, he peered at half a dozen sticks in the corner of the room, grasped their

handles, and selected the Demerara supplejack, for no particular reason; the curved knot was easy to the

grasp. It was in his mind, that this person signing herself Judith Marsett, might have something to say, which

intimately concerned Nesta. He fell to brooding on it, until he wondered why he had not been made a trifle

anxious by the reading of the note overnight. Skepsey was left at Nesta's house.

JUDITH MARSETT stood in her room to receive Nesta's hero. She was flushed, and had thinned her lips for

Her aim was to preserve an impressive decorum. She was at the same time burning to speak out furious

wrath, in words of savage rawness, if they should come, as a manner of slapping the world's cheek for the

state to which it reduces its women; whom one of the superior creatures can insult, and laugh.

Men complaining of the `peace which is near their extinction,' have but to shuffle with the sex; they will

Dartrey had some flitting notion of the untamed original elements women can bring about us, in his short

observant bow to Mrs. Marsett, following so closely upon the scene with Mrs. Blathenoy.

But this handsome woman's look of the dull red line of a sombre fire, that needed only stir of a breath to

She was discerned at a glance to be an aristocratic member of regions where the senses perpetually simmer

when they are not boiling. The talk at the Club recurred to him. How could Nesta have come to know the

woman? His questioning of the chapter of marvellous accidents, touched Nesta simply, as a young girl to be

protected, without abhorrently involving the woman. He had his ideas of the Spirit of Woman stating her case

to the One Judge, for lack of an earthly just one: a story different from that which is proclaimed pestilential

by the body of censors under conservatory glass; where flesh is delicately nurtured, highly prized; spirit not

so much so; and where the pretty tricking of the flesh is taken for a spiritual ascendancy.

In spite of her turbulent breast's burden to deliver, Mrs. Marsett's feminine acuteness was alive upon Dartrey,

confirming here and there Nesta's praises of him. She liked his build and easy carriage of a muscular frame:

her Ned was a heavy man. More than Dartrey's figure, as she would have said, though the estimate came

second, she liked his manner with her. Not a doubt was there, that he read her position. She could impose

upon some: not upon masculine eyes like these. They did not scrutinize, nor ruffle a smooth surface with a

snap at petty impressions; and they were not cynically intimate or dominating or tentatively amorous: clear

good fellowship was in them. And it was a blessedness (whatever might be her feeling later, when she came

to thank him at heart) to be in the presence of a man whose appearance breathed of offering her common

ground, whereon to meet and speak together, unburdened by the hunting world, and by the stoning world.

Such common ground seems a kind of celestial to the better order of those excluded from it.

Dartrey relieved her midway in a rigid practice of the formalities: "I think I may guess that you have

"It is." Mrs. Marsett gathered up for an immediate plunge, and deferred it. "I met herwe went out with the

ridingmaster. She took to me. I like herI could say" (the woman's voice dropped dead low, in a tremble),

"He is acalls himself a friend of myof Captain Marsett's. He met us out one day."

She rejoiced in Dartrey's look. "Not then. First let me tell you. I can hardly tell you. But Miss Radnor tells me

you are not like other men. You have made your conclusions already. Are you asking what right I had to be

knowing her? It is her goodness. Accident began it; I did not deceive her; as soon as ever I could II have

Captain Marsett's promise to me: at present he's situated, hebut I opened my heart to her: as much as a

Mrs. Marsett aimed at formal speech, and was driving upon her natural in anger. "I swear I did it for the best.

She is an innocent girl . . . young lady: only she has a head; she soon reads things. I saw the kind of cloud in

her. I spoke. I felt bound to: she said she would not forsake me.I was bound to! And it was enough to

break my heart, to think of her despising me. No, she forgave, pitied; she was kind. Those are the angels who

cause us to think of changing. I don't care for sermons, but when I meet charity:I won't bore you!"

"My . . . Captain Marsett can't bearhe calls it Psalmody. He thinks things ought always to be as they are,

with women and men; and women preachers he does detest. She is not one to preach. You are waiting to hear

what I have to tell. That man Major Worrell has tried to rob me of everything I ever had to set a value

"She came here." Mrs. Marsett's tears had risen. "I ought not to have let her come. I invited herfor once: I

am lonely. None of my sexnone I could respect! I meant it for only once. She promised to sing to me. And,

Oh! how she sings! You have heard her. My whole heart came out. I declare I believe girls exist who can hear

our way of lifeand I'm not so bad except compared with that angel, who heard me, and was and is, I could

take oath, no worse for it. Some girls can; she is one. I am all for bringing them up in complete innocence. If I

was a great lady, my daughters should never know anything of the world until they were married. But Miss

Radnor is a young lady who cannot be hurt. She is above us. Oh! what a treasure for a man! and my God!

"Blame me as much as you like: I do myself. Half my rage with him is at myself for putting her in the way of

such a beast to annoy. Each time she came, I said it was to be the last. I let her see what a mercy from heaven

she was to me. She would come. It has not been many times. She wishes me either to . . . Captain Marsett has

promised. And nothing seems hard to me when my own God's angel is by. She is! I'm not such a bad woman,

but I never before I knew her knew the meaning of the word virtue. There is the young lady that man worried

with his insulting remarks! though he must have known she was a lady:because he found her in my

"Yesterday, after dark. My NedCaptain Marsett encourages him to be familiar. I should be the lowest of

women if I feared the threats of such a reptile of a man. I could tell you more. I can't always refuse his visits,

She went straight to the mantelpiece, and faced about with a card, handing it, quite aware that it was a charge

Desperate things to be done excused the desperate said; and especially they seemed a cover to the bald and

often spotty language leaping out of her, against her better taste, when her temper was up.

"Somewhere not very distant," said Dartrey, perusing. "Is he in the town today, do you know?"

"She stopped speaking: she looked at the door. She may come againor never! through that man!"

"Captain Marsett wishes me to. He is on his way home. He calls Major Worrell my pet spite. All I want is,

not to hear of the man. I swear he came yesterday on the chance of seeingfor he forced his way up past my

"Well, I thank you," Dartrey said. "The young lady is the daughter of my dearest friends. She's one of the

"I will." She heaved openmouthed to get physical control of the tide. "When you say that of her!how can

I help it? It's I fearbecause I fear . . . and I've no right to expect ever . . . but if I'm never again to look on

that dear face, tell her I shallI shall pray for her in my grave. Tell her she has done all a woman can, an

angel can, to save my soul. I speak truth: my very soul! I could never go to the utter bad after knowing her. I

don'tyou know the worldI'm a poor helpless woman! don't swear to give up my Ned if he does break

the word he promised once; I can't see how I could. I haven't her courage. I haven'twhat it is!You know

her: it's in her eyes and her voice. If I had her beside me, then I would starve or go to executionI could, I

"Here's a chair," said Dartrey. "I've no time to spare; good day, for the present. You will permit me to call."

"Oh! come;" she cried, out of her sobs, for excuse. They were genuine, or she would better have been able to

She beheld him, when he was in the street, turn for the district where Major Worrell had his lodgings. That

Major Worrell was not at home. Dartrey was informed, that he might be at his Club.

At the Club he heard of the major as having gone to London and being expected down in the afternoon.

Colonel Sudley named the train: an early train; the major was engaged to dine at the Club. Dartrey had

information supplied to him concerning Major Worrell and Captain Marsett, also Mrs. Marsett. She had a

history. Worthy citizens read the description of history with interest when the halo of Royalty is round it.

They may, if their reading extends, perceive, that it has been the main turbid stream in old Mammon's train

since he threw his bait for flesh. They might ask, too, whether it is likely to cease to flow while he remains

potent. The lady's history was brief, and bore recital in a Club; came off quite honourably there. Regarding

Major Worrell, the tale of him showed him to have a pass among men. He managed cleverly to get his

pleasures out of a small income and a `fund of anecdote.' His reputation indicated an anecdotist of the table,

prevailing in the primitive societies, where the art of conversing does not come by nature, and is exercised in

monosyllabic undertones or grunts until the narrator's wellmasticated popular anecdote loosens a digestive

laughter, and some talk ensues. He was Marsett's friend, and he boasted of not letting Ned Marsett make a

Dartrey was not long in shaping the man's character: Worrell belonged to the male birds of upper air, who

mangle what female prey they are forbidden to devour. And he had Miss Radnor's name: he had spoken her

name at the Club overnight. He had roused a sensation, because of a man being present, Percy Southweare,

who was related to a man as good as engaged to marry her. The major never fell into a quarrel with sons of

Dartrey spoke musing: "I don't know how he may class me; I have an account to square with him."

"It won't do in these days, my good friend. Come and cool yourself; and we'll lunch here. I shan't leave you."

"By all means. We'll lunch, and walk up to the station, and you will point him out to me."

Dartrey stated Major Worrell's offence. The colonel was not astonished; but evidently he thought less of

Worrell's behaviour to Miss Radnor in Mrs. Marsett's presence than of the mention of her name at the Club:

and that, he seemed to think, had a shade of excuse against the charge of monstrous. He blamed the young

lady who could go twice to visit a Mrs. Marsett; partly exposed a suspicion of her. Dartrey let him talk. They

Suddenly saying: "There, beside our friend in clerical garb: here she comes; judge if that is the girl for the

foulest of curs to worry, no matter where she's found," Dartrey directed the colonel's attention to Nesta and

He saluted. She bowed. There was no contraction of her eyelids; and her face was white. The mortal life

appeared to be deadened in her cold wide look; as when the stormwind banks a leaden remoteness, leaving

"What man!" cried Dartrey. "If we had a Society for the trial of your gentleman!but he has only to call

himself gentleman to get grant of licence: and your Society protects him. It won't punish, and it won't let you.

"We'll dare it, to waken the old country. Old England will count none but Worrells in time. As for discreet, if

you like! the young lady might have been more discreet. She's a girl with a big heart. If we were all

Dartrey may have meant, that the consequence of a prolonged conformity would be the generation of

stenches to shock to purging tempests the tolerant heavens over such smooth stagnancy. He had his ideas

about movement; about the good of women, and the health of his England. The feeling of the hopelessness of

pleading Nesta's conduct, for the perfect justification of it to son or daughter of our impressing conventional

worldeven to a friend, that friend a true man, a really chivalrous man!drove him back in a silence upon

his natural brotherhood with souls that dare do. It was a wonder, to think of his finding this kinship in a

woman. In a girl?and the world holding that virgin spirit to be unclean or shadowed because its rays were

shed on foul places? He clasped the girl. Her smitten clear face, the face of the second sigh after torture, bent

The clasping and the worshipping were independent of personal ardours: quaintly mixed with semipaternal

recollections of the little `blue butterfly' of the days at Craye Farm and Creckholt; and he had heard of

Dudley Sowerby's pretensions to her hand. Nesta's youthfulness cast double age on him from the child's past.

He pictured the child; pictured the girl, with her look of solitariness of sight; as in the desolate wide world,

where her noble compassion for a woman had unexpectedly, painfully, almost by transubstantiation, rack

They held sway over Dartrey, and lost it some steps on; his demon temper urging him to strike at Major

Worrell, as the cause of her dismayed expression. He was not the happier for dropping to his nature; but we

proceed more easily, all of us, when the strain which lifts us a foot or two off our native level is relaxed.

THAT ashen look of the rise out of death from one of our mortal wounds, was caused by deeper convulsions

She had gone for the walk with Mr. Barmby, reading the omen of his tones in the request. Dorothea and

Virginia would have her go. The clerical gentleman, a friend of the Rev. Abram Posterley; and one who

deplored poor Mr. Posterley's infatuation; and one besides who belonged to Nesta's musical choir in London;

seemed a safe companion for the child. The grand organ of Mr. Barmby's voice, too, assured them of a

devout seriousness in him, that arrested any scrupulous little questions. They could not conceive his uttering

the nonsensical empty stuff, compliments to their beauty and what not, which girls hear sometimes from

inconsiderate gentlemen, to the having of their heads turned. Moreover, Nesta had rashly promised her

father's faithful servant Skepsey to walk out with him in the afternoon; and the ladies hoped she would find

the morning's walk to have been enough; good little man though Skepsey was, they were sure. But there is

Mr. Barmby headed to the pier. After pacing up and down between the briny gulls and a polkaband, he

made his way forethoughtfully to the glasssheltered seats fronting East: where, as his enthusiasm for the

solemnity of the occasion excited him to say, "We have a view of the terraces and the cliffs;" and where not

more than two enwrapped invalid figures were ensconced. Then it was, that Nesta recalled her anticipation of

his possible design; forgotten by her during their talk of her dear people: Priscilla Graves and Mr. Pempton,

and the Yatts, and Simeon Fenellan, Peridon and Catkin, and Skepsey likewise; and the very latest news of

her mother. She wished she could have run before him, to spare him. He would not notice a sign. Girls must

It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on to the sinking into its fellow; and onward again for the

swell and the weariful lapse; and up at last bursting to the sheet of white. The farheard roar and the near

At the first direct note, the burden of which necessitated a pause, she petitioned him to be her friend, to think

But a vessel laden with merchandize, that has crossed wild seas for this particular port, is hardly to be

debarred from discharging its goods on the quay by simple intimations of their not being wanted. We are

precipitated both by the aim and the tedium of the lengthened voyage to insist that they be seen. We believe

perforce in their temptingness; and should allurement fail, we fall back to the belief in our eloquence. An

eloquence to expose the qualities they possess, is the testification in the promise of their excellence. She is to

be induced by feeling to see it. We are asking a young lady for the precious gift of her hand. We respect her;

and because of our continued respect, despite an obstruction, we have come to think we have a claim upon

her gratitude; could she but be led to understand how different we are from some other men!from one

hitherto favoured among them, unworthy of this prize, however personally exalted and meritorious.

The wave of wide extension rolled and sank and rose, heaving lifeless variations of the sickly streaks on its

Dudley Sowerby's defection was hinted at and accounted for, by the worldly test of worldly considerations.

An indistinct comparison was modestly presented, of one unmoved by worldly considerations.

But what were they? She was wakened by a lamp, and her darkness was all inflammable to it.

"Oh! Mr. Barmby, you have done me the honour to speak before; you know my answer," she said.

"You were then subject to an influence. A false, I may say wicked, sentiment upholding celibacy."

"My poor Louise? She never thought of influencing me. She has her views, I mine. Our friendship does not

depend on a `treaty of reciprocity.' We are one at heart, each free to judge and act, as it should be in

friendship. I heard from her this morning. Her brother will be able to resume his military duties next month.

Beholding the involuntary mercurial roguedimple he had started from a twitch at the corner of her lips, the

good gentleman pursued: "Can we dare write our designs for the month to come? Ah!I will sayNesta!

give me the hope I beg to have. See the seriousness. You are at liberty. That other has withdrawn his

pretensions. We will not blame him. He is in expectation of exalted rank. Where there is any shadow! . . ."

Mr. Barmby paused on his outroll of the word; but immediately, not intending to weigh down his gentle

hearer with the significance in it, resumed at a yet more sonorous depth: "He is under the obligation to his

family; an old, a venerable family. In the full blaze of public opinion! His conduct can be palliated by us, too.

There is a right and wrong in minor things, independent of the higher rectitude. We pardon, we can partly

He was on the footing where men are precipitated by what is within them to blunder. "On youno. On you

personally, not at all. No. It could not be deemed so. Not by those knowing, esteemingnot by him who

loves you, and would, with his name, would, with his whole strength, envelop, shield . . . certainly certainly

"But to me nothing, nothing, quite naught! To confound the innocent with the guilty! . . . and excuses may

"It is on both my parents?" she said; with a simplicity that induced him to reply: "Before the world. But not, I

The bandinstruments behind the sheltering glass flourished on their termination of a waltz.

She had not heeded their playing. Now she said: "The music is over; we must not be late at lunch;" and she

He sprang to his legs and obediently stepped out: "I shall have your answer today? this evening? Nesta!"

"Mr. Barmby, it will be the same. You will be kind to me in not asking me again."

Had he done ill or well for himself and for her when he named the shadow on her parents? He dwelt more on

her than on himself: he would not have wounded her to win the blest affirmative. Could she have been

entirely ignorant?and after Dudley Sowerby's defection? For such it was: the Rev. Stuart Rem had declared

the union between the almost designated head of the Cantor family and a young person of no name, of worse

than no birth, impossible: "absolutely and totally impossible," he had said, in his impressive fashion, speaking

from his knowledge of the family and an acquaintance with Dudley. She must necessarily have learnt why

Dudley Sowerby withdrew. No parents of an attractive daughter should allow her to remain unaware of her

actual position in the world. It is criminal, a reduplication of the criminality! Yet she had not spoken as one

astonished. She was mysterious. Women are so: young women most of all. It is undecided still whether they

do of themselves conceive principles, or should submit to an imposition of the same upon them in

terrorem.Mysterious truly, but most attractive! As Lady Bountiful of a district, she would have in her

maturity the majestic stature to suit a dispensation of earthly good things. And, strangely, here she was, at this

moment, rivalling to excelling all others of her sex (he verified it in the crowd of female faces passing), when

they, if they but knew the facts, would visit her very appearance beside them on a common footing as an

Moved by reflective compassion, Mr. Barmby resumed the wooer's note, some few steps after he had

responded to the salutation of Dartrey Fenellan and Colonel Sudley. She did not speak. She turned her

He declined the pleasure of the lunch with the Duvidney ladies. He desired to be alone, to question himself

fasting, to sound the deed he had done; for he had struck on a suspicion of selfishness in it: and though Love

must needs be an egoism, Love is no warrant for the doing of a hurt to the creature beloved. Thoughts upon

Skepsey and the tale of his Matilda Pridden's labours in poor neighbourhoods, to which he had been

inattentive during the journey down to the sea, invaded him; they were persistent. He was a worthy man,

having within him the spiritual impulse curiously ready to take the place where a material disappointment left

vacancy. The vulgar sort embrace the devil at that stage. Before the day had sunk, Mr. Barmby's lowest wish

was, to be a light, as the instrument of his Church in her ministrations amid the haunts of sin and slime, to

such plain souls as Daniel Skepsey and Matilda Pridden. And he could still be that, if Nesta, in the chapters

of the future, changed her mind. She might; for her good she would; he reserved the hope. His light was one

At the luncheon table of the Duvidney ladies, it was a pain to Dorothea and Virginia to witness how poor the

appetite their Nesta brought in from the briny blowy walk. They prophesied against her chances of a good

sleep at night, if she did not eat heartily. Virginia timidly remarked on her paleness. Both of them put their

simple arts in motion to let her know, that she was dear to them: so dear as to make them dread the hour of

parting. They named their dread of it. They had consulted in private and owned to one another, that they did

really love the child, and dared not look forward to what they should do without her. The dear child's

paleness and want of appetite (they remembered they were observing a weak innocent girl) suggested to them

mutually the idea of a young female heart sickening, for the old unhappy maiden reason. But, if only she

might return with them to the Wells, the Rev. Stuart Rem would assure her to convince her of her not being

quite quite forsaken. He, or some one having sanction from Victor, might ultimately (the ladies waiting

anxiously in the next room, to fold her on the warmth of their bosoms when she had heard) impart to her the

knowledge of circumstances, which would, under their further tuition concerning the particular sentiments of

great families and the strict duties of the scions of the race, help to account for and excuse the Hon. Dudley

They went up to the drawingroom, talking of Skepsey and his tale of Miss Pridden, for Nesta's amusement.

Any talk of her Skepsey usually quickened her lips to reminiscent smiles and speech. Now she held on to

For a vague encouragement, Dorothea said: "One week, and we are back home at Moorsedge!"not so far

from Cronidge, was implied, for the administering of some foolish temporary comfort. And it was as when a

fish on land springs its hollow sides in alien air for the sustaining element; the girl panted; she clasped

Dorothea's hand and looked at Virginia: "My mother I must see her!" she said. They were slightly

stupefied by the unwonted mention of her mother. They made no reply. They never had done so when there

was allusion to her mother. Their silence now struck a gong at the girl's bosom.

Dorothea had it in mind to say, that if she thirsted for any special comfort, the friends about her would offer

Before she could speak, Perrin the footman entered, bearing the card of the Hon. Dudley Sowerby.

The ladies were somewhat agitated, but no longer perplexed as to their duties. They had quitted Moorsedge to

avoid the visit of his family. If he followed, it signified that which they could not withstand:"the Tivoli

falls!" as they named the fateful tremendous human passion, from the reminiscences of an impressive day on

their travels in youth; when the leaping torrent had struck upon a tale of love they were reading. They

hurriedly entreated Nesta to command her nerves; peremptorily requested her to stay where she was; showed

her spontaneously, by way of histrionic adjuration, the face to be worn by young ladies at greetings on these

Dudley entered the drawingroom, charged with his happy burden of a love that had passed through the

furnace. She stood near a window, well in the light; she hardly gave him welcome. His address to her was

hurried, rather uncertain, coherent enough between the drop and the catch of articulate syllables. He found

himself holding his hat. He placed it on the table, and it rolled foolishly; but soon he was by her side, having

"You are thinking, you have not heard from me! I have been much occupied," he said. "My brother is ill, very

He repeated the call of her name. "I should have writtenI ought to have written!I could not have

She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent were explicable in a sentence. It had to be deferred.

Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict undergone by him during the period of the silence

between them, he wondered at the vastness of the love which had conquered objections, to him so poignant.

There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth when looking on her face. Nor when thinking of

the beauty of her character, in absence or in presence, was there any. He had mastered distaste to such a

degree, that he forgot the assistance he had received from the heiress for enabling him to appreciate the fair

young girl. Money is the imperious requirement of superior station; and more money and more: in these our

modern days of the merchant's wealth, and the miner's, and the gigantic American and Australian

millionaires, high rank is of necessity vowed, in peril of utter eclipse, to the possession of money. Still it is,

when assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentleman in whose bosom love and the buzzing world

have fought their battle out. He could believe it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged endurance of a

contest lasting many days and nights; in the midst of which, at one time, the task of writing to tell her of his

As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered features, to repress an indicative dread of some

intrepid force behind it, that might be unfeminine, however gentle the external lineaments. Her features, her

present aristocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her character would submit to moulding. Of all

young ladies in the world, she should be the one to shrink from a mental independence and hold to the

guidance of the man ennobling her. Did she? Her eyes were reading him. She had her father's limpid eyes,

Some remainder of suspicion in the dealing with members of this family, urged Dudley to say: "I understood

"I have heard: I have guessed: it was recentlythis morning, as it happened. I wish to go to my mother

"You are kind; I have Skepsey." She relieved the situation of its coldtoned strain in adding: "He is a host."

"I claim the right, then. Always. And subsequently, soon after, my mother hopes to welcome you at

Cronidge. She will be glad to hear of your naming of a day. My father bids me . . . he and all our family."

He had again observed and he slightly crisped under the speculative look she directed on him: a simple

unstrained look, that had an air of reading right in, and was worse to bear with than when the spark leaped

upon some thought from her eyes: though he had no imagination of anything he concealed or exposed, and he

would have set it down to her temporary incredulousness of his perfect generosity or power to overcome the

world's opinion of certain circumstances. That had been a struggle! The peculiar look was not renewed. She

spoke warmly of her gratitude. She stated, that she must of necessity see her parents at once. She submitted to

his entreaty to conduct her to them on the morrow. It was in the manner of one who yielded step by step,

Her attitude continuing unchanged, he became sensible of a monotony in the speech with which he assailed it,

and he rose to leave, not dissatisfied. She, at his urgent request, named her train for London in the early

morning. He said it was not too early. He would have desired to be warmed; yet he liked her the better for the

moral sentiment controlling the physical. He had appointments with relatives or connections in the town, and

on that pretext be departed, hoping for the speedy dawn of the morrow as soon as he had turned his back on

No, not he the man to have pity of women underfoot!That was the thought, unresolved, unphrased, all but

unconscious, in Nesta: and while her heart was exalting him for his generosity. Under her present sense of the

chilling shadow, she felt the comfort there was in being grateful to him for the golden beams which his

generosity cast about her. But she had an intelligence sharp to pierce, virgin though she was; and with the

mark in sight, however distant, she struck it, unerring as an Artemis for blood of beasts: those shrewd young

wits, on the lookout to find a champion, athirst for help upon a desolate road, were hard as any judicial to

pronounce the sentence upon Dudley in that respect. She raised him high; she placed herself low; she had a

glimpse of the struggle he had gone through; love of her had helped him, she believed. And she was melted;

and not the less did the girl's implacable intuition read with the keenness of eye of a man of the world the

blunt division in him, where warm humanity stopped short at the wall of social concrete forming a part of this

rightly esteemed young citizen. She, too, was divided: she was at his feet; and she rebuked herself for daring

to judgeor rather, it was, for having a reserve in her mind upon a man proving so generous with her. She

was pulled this way and that by sensibilities both inspiring to blind gratitude and quickening her penetrative

Dorothea and Virginia were seated in the room below, waiting for their carriage, when the halldoor spoke of

the Hon. Dudley's departure; soon after, Nesta entered to them. She swam up to Dorothea's lap, and dropped

The ladies feared she might be weeping. Dorothea patted her thick brown twisted locks of hair. Unhappiness

Her speaking of the words renewed an oppression, that had darkened her on the descent of stairs. For

sensibilities sharp as Nesta's, are not to be had without their penalties: and she who had gone nigh to

summing in a flash the nature of Dudley, sank suddenly under that affliction often besetting the young

adventurous mind, crushing to young women:the fascination exercised upon them by a positive adverse

masculine attitude and opinion. Young men know well what it is: and if young women have by chance

overcome their timidity, to the taking of any step out of the trim pathway, they shrink, with a sense of

forlornest isolation. It becomes a subjugation; inciting to revolt, but a heavy weight to cast off. Soon it

assumed its material form for the contention between her and Dudley, in the figure of Mrs. Marsett. The

Nesta who had been instructed to know herself to be under a shadow, heard, she almost justified Dudley's

reproaches to her, for having made the acquaintance of the unhappy woman, for having visited her, for

having been, though but for a minute, at the mercy of a coarse gentleman's pursuit. The recollection was a

Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring of Dudley's words, should news of her relations

with Mrs. Marsett reach him:and she would have to tell him. Would he not say: `I have borne with the

things concerning your family. All the greater reason why I must insist . . .' he would assuredly say he

insisted (her humour caught at the word, as being the very word one could foresee and clearly see him

And with Nesta's present enlightenment by dusky beams, upon her parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley,

or the opinion of the majority. Would he not say or think, that her clinging to Mrs. Marsett put them under a

These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined to be a battlefield for the enrichment of a

harvestfield of them, while the girl's face was hidden on Dorothea's lap, and her breast heaved and heaved.

They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea said: "Yes, dear; any day you like."

A suggestion of her mother's coming down, was faintly spoken by one lady, echoed in a quaver by the other.

Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she entreated them to give their promise that they would invite

Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both ladies embraced her: not entirely yieldingup their

hearts to her, by reason of the pernicious new ideas now in the world to sap our foundations of morality;

which warned them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite justifiable behaviour, even when

ALL through the afternoon and evening Skepsey showed indifference to meals by continuing absent: and he

was the one with whom Nesta would have felt at home; more at home than with her parents. He and the cool

world he moved in were a transparency of peace to her mind; even to his giving of some portion of it, when

she had the dear little man present to her in a vivid image of a fish in a glassglobe, wandering round and

round, now and then shooting across, just as her Skepsey did: he carried his head semihorizontally at his

arrowy pace; plain to read though he was, he appeared, under that image created of him, animated by motives

She thought of him till she could have reproached him for not returning and helping her to get away from the

fever of other thoughts:this anguish twisting about her parents, and the dreadful trammels of gratitude to a

The latter was the least of evils; she had her charges to bring against them for injustice: uncited, unstirred

charges, they were effective as a muffled force to sustain her: and the young who are of healthy lively blood

and clean conscience have either emotion or imagination to fold them defensively from an enemy world;

whose power to drive them forth into the wilderness they acknowledge. But in the wilderness their souls are

not beaten down by breath of mortals; they burn straight flame there up to the parent Spirit.

She could not fancy herself flying thither;where to be shorn and naked and shivering is no hardship, for the

solitude clothes, and the sole true life in us resolves to that steady flame;she was restrained by Dudley's

generosity, which held her fast to have the forgiveness for her uncommitted sin dashed in her face. He

surprised her; the unexpected quality in him seemed suddenly to have snared her fast; and she did not obtain

release after seeing behind it;seeing it, by the light of what she demanded, personal, shallow, a lover's

generosity. So her keen intellect saw it; and her young blood (for the youthful are thus divided) thrilled in

thinking it must be love! The name of the sacred passion lifted it out of the petty cabin of the individual into a

quiring cathedral universal, and subdued her. It subdued her with an unwelcome touch of tenderness when

she thought of it as involving tenderness for her mother, some chivalrous respect for her mother. Could he

love the daughter without some little, which a more intimate knowledge of her dear mother would enlarge?

The girl's heart flew to her mother, clung to her, vindicated her dumbly. It would not inquire, and it refused to

hear, hungering the while. She sent forth her flights of stories in elucidation of the hidden; and they were like

white bird after bird winging to covert beneath a thundercloud; until her breast ached for the voice of the

thunder: harsh facts: sure as she was of her never losing her filial hold of the beloved. She and her mother

grew together, they were one. Accepting the shadow, they were the closer one beneath it. She had neither

At the hour of ten, the ladies retired for the enjoyment of their sweet reward. Manton, their maid, came down

to sit with Nesta on the watch for Skepsey. Perrin, the footman, returning, as late as twenty minutes to eleven,

from his tobacco promenade along the terrace, reported to Manton "a row in town"; and he repeated to Nesta

the policeman's opinion and his own of the "Army" fellows, and the way to treat them. Both were for rigour.

"The name of `Army' attracts poor Skepsey so, I am sure he would join it, if they would admit him," Nesta

"He has an immense respect for a young woman, who belongs to his `Army'; and one doesn't know what may

Two or three minutes after eleven, a feeble ring at the bell gained admission for some person: whispering was

heard in the passage. Manton played eavesdropper, and suddenly bursting on Skepsey, arrested him when

about to dash upstairs. His young mistress's voice was a sufficient command; he yielded; he pitched a smart

sigh and stepped into her presence for his countenance to be seen, or the show of a countenance, that it

"Skepsey wanted to rush to bed without saying good night to me?" said she; leaving unnoticed, except for

woefulness of tone, his hurried shuffle of remarks on "his appearance," and "little accidents;" ending with an

inclination of his disgraceful person to the doorway, and a petition: "If I might, Miss Nesta?" The implied

pathetic reference to a surgicallytreated nose under a cross of strips of plaster, could not obtain dismissal for

him. And he had one eye of sinister hue, showing beside its lighted grey fellow as if a sullen punished

dragonwhelp had couched near some quick woodpigeon. The two eyes blinked rapidly. He was a picture

"Yes, if you must," Nesta said. "But, dear Skepsey, will it be the magistrate again tomorrow?"

He feared it would be; he fancied it would needs be. He concluded by stating, that he was bound to appear

before the magistrate in the morning; and he begged assistance to keep it from the knowledge of the Miss

"A good gentleman, a resident," he replied; "a military gentleman; indeed, a colonel of the cavalry; but, it

may so be, retired; and anxious about our vast possessions; though he thinks a translation of a French attack

Hearing that name, Nesta said: "Now, Skepsey, you must tell me everything. You are not to mind your looks.

"Miss Nesta, it depends upon the magistrate's not being prejudiced against the streetprocessionists."

"I would not say no, Miss Nesta. But we find, the opinion of the public has its effect with magistratestheir

sentences. They are severe on boxing. They have latterly treated the `Army' with more consideration, owing

"You walked in the ranks today, and you were maltreated? Your friend was there?"

Manton interposed: "You are to speak, Mr. Skepsey;" and she stopped a flood of narrative, that was knocking

in his mind to feel its head and to leapan uninterrupted halfminute more would have shaped the story for

He began, after attending to the throb of his bruises in a manner to correct them rather than solace; and the

beginning was the end: "Captain Dartrey rescued us, before Matilda Pridden suffered harm, to mentionthe

chin, slight, teeth unshaken; a beautiful set. She is angry with Captain Dartrey, for having recourse to

violence in her defence: it is against her principles. `Then you die,' she says; and our principles are to gain

more by death. She says, we are alive in them; but worse if we abandon them for the sake of living.I am a

little confused; she is very abstruse.Because, that is the corruptible life, she says. I have found it quite

impossible to argue with her; she has always a complete answer; wonderful. In case of Invasion, we are to lift

our voices to the Lord; and the Lord's will shall be manifested. If we are robbed, we ask, How came we by

the goods. It is unreasonable; it strikes at rights of property. But I have to go on thinking. When in danger,

she sings without excitement. When the blow struck her, she stopped singing only an instant. She says, no

one fears, who has real faith. She will not let me call her brave. She cannot admire Captain Dartrey. Her

principles are opposed. She said to him, `Sir, you did what seemed to you right.' She thinks every blow struck

"She is very firm. You cannot move her.Captain Dartrey was on his way to the station, to meet a

gentleman from London, Miss Nesta. He carried a sticka remarkable stickhe had shown to me in the

morning, and he has given it me now. He says, he has done his last with it. He seems to have some of Matilda

Pridden's ideas about fighting, when it's over. He was glad to be rid of the stick, he said."

"Captain Dartrey says, England may hold up her head while she breeds young women like Matilda

Hereupon Manton, sick of Miss Pridden, shook the little man with a snappish word, to bring him to attention.

She got him together sufficiently for him to give a lame version of the story; flat until he came to his

heroine's behaviour, when he brightened a moment, and he sank back absorbed in her principles and theories

of life. It was understood by Nesta, that the processionists, going at a smart pace, found their way blocked

and were assaulted in one of the sidestreets; and that Skepsey rushed to the defence of Matilda Pridden; and

that, while they were engaged, Captain Dartrey was passing at the end of the street, and recognized one he

knew in the thick of it and getting the worst of it, owing to numbers. "I will show you the stick he did it with,

Miss Nesta;" said Skepsey, regardless of narrative; and darted out of the room to bring in the Demerara

supplejack; holding which, he became inspired to relate something of Captain Dartrey's deeds.

They gave no pleasure to his young lady, as he sadly perceived:thus it is with the fair sex ever, so fond of

heroes! She shut her eyes from the sight of the Demerara supplejack descending right and left upon the

skulls of a couple of bully lads. "That will doyou were rescued. And now go to bed, Skepsey; and be up at

seven to breakfast with me," Nesta said, for his battledamaged face would be more endurable to behold after

an interval, she hoped; and she might in the morning dissociate its evil look from the deeds of Captain

The thought of her hero taking active part in a streetfray, was repulsive to her; it swamped his brilliancy.

And this distressed her, by withdrawing the support which the thought of him had been to her since midday.

She lay for sleepless hours, while nursing a deeper pain, under oppression of repugnance to battledealing,

bloodshedding men. It was long before she grew mindful of the absurdity of the moan recurring whenever

reflection wearied. Translated into speech, it would have run: `In a street of the town! with a stick!'The

vulgar picture pursued her to humiliation; it robbed her or dimmed her possession of the one bright thing she

had remaining to her. So she deemed it during the heavy sighs of night; partly conscious, that in some strange

way it was as much as tossing her to the man who never could have condescended to the pugnacious using of

Her heart was weak that night. She hovered above it, but not so detached as to scorn it for fawning to

oneany onewho would offer her and her mother a cover from scorn. And now she exalted Dudley's

generosity, now clung to a low idea of a haven in her father's wealth; and she was unaware, that the second

mood was deduced from the first. She did know herself cowardly: she had, too, a critic in her clear head, to

spurn at the creature who could think of purchasing the world's respect. Dudley's generosity sprang up to

silence the voice. She could praise him, on a review of it, for delicacy, moreover; and the delicacy laid her

under a more positive obligation. Her sense of it was not without a toneless quaint faint savour of the

romantic, that her humour little humorously caught at, to paint her a picture of former heroes of fiction, who

win their trying lady by their perfection of good conduct on a background of high birth; and who are not seen

to be wooden before the volume closes. Her fatigue of sleeplessness plunged her into the period of

pokebonnets and peaky hats to admire him; giving her the kind of sweetness we may imagine ourselves to

get in the state of tired horse munching bay. If she had gone to her bed with a noble or simply estimable plain

image of one of her friends in her heart, to sustain it, she would not have been thus abject. Skepsey's

discoloured eye, and Captain Dartrey's behaviour behind it, threw her upon Dudley's generosity, as being the

shield for an outcast. Girls, who see at a time of need their ideal extinguished in its appearing tarnished, are

very much at the disposal of the pressing suitor. Nesta rose in the black winter morn, summoning the best she

According to an agreement overnight, she went to the bedroom of Dorothea and Virginia, to assure them of

her having slept well, and say the goodbye to them and their Tasso. The little dog was the growl of a silken

ball in a basket. His mistresses excused him, because of his being unused to the appearance of any person

save Manton in their bedroom. Dorothea, kissing her, said: "Adieu, dear child; and there is home with us

always, remember. And, after breakfast, however it may be, you will, for our greater feeling of security,

haveshe has our ordersMantonyour own maid we consider too young for a guardianto accompany

you. We will not have it on our consciences, that by any possibility harm came to you while you were under

our charge. The good innocent girl we received from the hands of your father, we return to him; we are sure

Virginia put in a word of apology for Tasso's temper: he enjoyed ordinarily a slumber of half an hour's longer

duration. He was, Dorothea feelingly added, regularity itself. Virginia murmured: "Except once!" and both

were appalled by the recollection of that night. It had, nevertheless, caused them to reperuse the Rev. Stuart

Rem's published beautiful sermon On Dirt; the words of which were an antidote to the night of Tasso in the

nostrils of Mnemosyne; so that Dorothea could reply to her sister, slightly by way of a reproval, quoting Mr.

Stuart Rem at his loftiest: "`Let us not bring into the sacred precincts Dirt from the roads, but have a care to

spread it where it is a fructification.'" Virginia produced the sequent sentence, likewise weighty. Nesta stood

between the thin division of their beds, her right hand given to one, her left to the other. They had the

She reflected, after shutting the door of their room, that the residing with them had been a means of casting

herit was an effort to remember howupon the world where the tree of knowledge grows. She had eaten

and she might be the worse for it; but she was raised to a height that would not let her look with envy upon

peace and comfort. Luxurious quiet people were as ripening glasshouse fruits. Her bitter gathering of the

knowledge of life had sharpened her intellect; and the intellect, even in the young, is, and not less usefully,

hard metal rather than fallow soil. But for the fountain of human warmth at her breast, she might have been

snared by the conceit of intellect, to despise the simple and conventional, or shed the pity which is charity's

contempt. She had only to think of the kindness of the dear good ladies; her heart jumped to them at once.

And when she fancied hearing those innocent souls of women embracing her and reproaching her for the

knowledge of life she now bore, her words down deep in her bosom were: It has helped me to bear the shock

of other knowledge! How would she have borne it before she knew of the infinitely evil? Saving for the

tender compassion weeping over her mother, she had not much acute personal grief. For this world

condemning her birth, was the world tolerant of that infinitely evil! Her intellect fortified her to be combative

by day, after the night of imagination; which splendid power is not so serviceable as the logical mind in

painful seasons: for night revealed the world snorting Dragon's breath at a girl guilty of knowing its vilest.

More than she liked to recall, it had driven her scorched, half withered, to the shelter of Dudley. The daylight,

spreading thin at the windows, restored her from that weakness. "We will quit England," she said, thinking of

her mother and herself, and then of her father's surely following them. She sighed thankfully, half way

through the breakfast with Skepsey, at sight of the hour by the clock; she was hurriedly sentient of the puzzle

of her feelings, when she guessed at a chance that Dudley would be delayed. She supposed herself as possibly

feeling not so well able to keep every thought of her head brooding on her mother in Dudley's company.

Skepsey's face was just sufferable by light of day, if one pitied reflecting on his honest intentions; it ceased to

discolour another. He dropped a few particulars of his hero in action; but the heroine eclipsed. He was

heavier than ever with his Matilda Pridden. At the hour for departure, Perrin had a conveyance at the door.

Nesta sent off Skepsey with a complimentary message to Captain Dartrey. Her maid Mary begged her to

finish her breakfast; Manton suggested the waiting a further two or three minutes. "We must not be late,"

Nesta said; and when the minutehand of the clock marked ample time for the drive to the station, she took

her seat and started, keeping her face resolutely set seaward, having at her ears the ring of a cry that was to

come from Manton. But Manton was dumb; she spied no one on the pavement who signalled to stop them.

And no one was at the station to greet them. They stepped into a carriage where they were alone. Dudley with

his dreaded generosity melted out of Nesta's thoughts, like the vanishing steamwreath on the dip between

She passed into music, as she always did under motion of carriages and trains, whether in happiness or

sadness: and the day being one that had a sky, the scenic of music swung her up to soar. None of her heavy

burdens enchained, though she knew the weight of them, with those of other painful souls. The piping at her

breast gave wings to large and small of the visible; and along the downs went stateliest of flowing dances; a

copse lengthened to forest; a pool of cattlewater caught gray for flights through enchantment.

Cottagechildren, wherever seen in groups, she wreathed above with angels to watch them. Her mind all the

while was busy upon earth, embracing her mother, eyeing her father. Imagination and our earthly met

midway, and still she flew, until she was brought to the ground by a shot. She struggled to rise, uplifting

Judith Marsett: a woman not so very much older than her own teens, in the count of years, and ages older;

and the world pulling at her heels to keep her low. That unhappiest had no one but a sisterly girl to help her:

The good and the bad in the woman struck separate blows upon the girl's resonant nature. She perceived the

good, and took it into her reflections. The bad she divined: it approached like some threat of inflammation.

Natures resonant as that which animated this girl, are quick at the wells of understanding: and she had her

intimations of the world's wisdom in witholding contagious presences from the very many of the young, who

may not have an aim, or ideal or strong human compassion, for a preservative. She was assured of her

possessing it. She asked herself in her mother's voice, and answered mutely. She had the certainty: for she

rebuked the slavish feverishness of the passion, as betrayed by Mrs. Marsett; and the woman's tone, as of

strung wires ringing on a rage of the wind. Then followed her cry for the man who would speak to Captain

Marsett of his duty in honour. An image of one, accompanying the faster beats of her heart, beguiled her to

think away from the cause. He, the one man known to her, would act the brother's part on behalf of the

Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at once imagination came to dust. She had to thank him:

she knelt to him. For the first time of her life she found herself seized with her sex's shudder in the blood.

AND if Nesta had looked out of her carriagewindow soon after the train began to glide, her eagle of

imagination would have reeled from the heights, with very different feelings, earlier, perhaps a captive, at

sight of the tardy gentleman rushing along the platform, and bending ear to the footman Perrin, and staring

The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an apprehension of the ominous in his having missed her. It

wound away, and left regrets, which raised a chorus of harsh congratulations from the opposite party of his

He had met his cousin Southweare overnight. He had heard, that there was talk of Miss Radnor. Her name

was in the mouth of Major Worrell. It was coupled with the name of Mrs. Marsett. A military captain, in the

It could be certified, that Miss Radnor visited the woman at her house. What are we to think of Miss Radnor,

save that daughters of depraved parents! . . . A torture undeserved is the Centaur's shirt for driving us to lay

about in all directions. He who had swallowed so mucha thunderbolt: a still undigested discharge from the

perplexing heavensjumped frantic under the pressure upon him of more, and worse. A girl getting herself

talked of at a Club! And she of all young ladies should have been the last to draw round her that buzz of

tongues. On such a subject!The parents pursuing their career of cynical ostentation in London, threw an

evil eye of heredity on their offspring in the egg; making anything credible, pointing at tendencies.

An alliance with her was impossible. So said disgust. Anger came like a stronger beast, and extinguished the

safety there was in the thing it consumed, by growing so excessive as to require tempering with drops of

compassion; which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness; and the moment that was

conceived, he had a passion to commit the horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and dissolved

Far from expunging the doubt of her, forgiveness gave it a stamp and an edge. His renewed enslavement set

him perusing his tyrant keenly, as nauseated captives do; and he saw, that forgiveness was beside the case.

For this Nesta Victoria Radnor would not crave it or accept it. He had mentally played the woman to her

superior vivaciousness too long for him to see her taking a culprit's attitude. What she did, she intended to do.

The mother would not have encouraged her. The father idolized her; and the father was a frank hedonist,

whose blood . . . speculation on horseback gallops to barren extremes. Eyes like hersif there had not been

the miserable dupes of girls! Conduct is the sole guide to female character. That likewise may be the

Popular artists, intent to gratify the national taste for effects called realistic, have figured in scenes of battle

the raying fragments of a man from impact of a cannonball on his person. Truly thus it may be when flesh

contends. But an image of the stricken and scattered mind of the man should, though deficient in the

attraction, have a greater significance, forasmuch as it does not exhibit him entirely liquefied and showered

into space; it leaves him his legs for the taking of further steps. Dudley, standing on the platform of Nesta's

train, one half minute too late, according to his desire before he put himself in motion, was as wildly torn as

the vapour shredded streaming to fingers and threads off the upright columnar shot of the shriek from the

boiler. He wished every mad antagonism to his wishes: that he might see her, be blind to her; embrace,

discard; heal his wound, and tear it wider. He thanked her for the grossness of an offence precluding excuses.

He was aware of a glimmer of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjuredup her features, and they said,

her innocence was the sinner; they scoffed at him for the dupe he was willing to be. She had enigma's mouth,

More than most girls, she was the girlSphinx to him: because of her having ideasor what he deemed

ideas. She struck a toning warmth through his intelligence, not dissimilar to the livelier circulation of the

blood in the frame breathing mountain air. She really helped him, incited him to go along with this windy

wild modern time more cheerfully, if not quite hopefully. For she had been the book of Romance he despised

when it appeared as a printed volume: and which might have educated the young man to read some among

our riddles in the book of humanity. The white he was ready to take for silver: the black were all black; the

spotted had received corruption's label. Her youthful French governess Mademoiselle de Seilles was also

peculiarly enigmatic at the mouth: conversant, one might expect, with the disintegrating literature of her

country. In public, the two talked of St. Louis. One of them in secret visits a Mrs. Marsett. The Southweare

women, the Hennen women, and Lady Evelina Reddish, were artless candid creatures in their early days, not

transgressing in a glance. Lady Grace Halley had her fit of the devotional previous to marriage. No girl

known to Dudley by report or acquaintance had committed so scandalous an indiscretion as Miss Radnor's: it

And on that ground, it started the voluble defence. For certain suspected things will dash suspicion to the

rebound, when they are very dark. As soon as the charge against her was moderated, the defence expired. He

heard the world delivering its judgement upon her; and he sorrowfully acquiesced. She passed from him.

When she was cut off, she sang him in the distance a remembered saying of hers, with the full melody of her

voice. One day, treating of modern Pessimism, he had draped a cadaverous view of our mortal being in a

quotation of the wisdom of the Philosopher Emperor: `To set one's love upon the swallow is a futility.' And

she, weighing it, nodded, and replied: "May not the pleasure for us remain if we set our love upon the beauty

There was, for a girl, a bit of idea, real idea, in that: meaning, of course, the picture we are to have of the

bird's wings in motion;it has often been admired. Oh! not much of an idea in itself:feminine and vague.

And the girl who could think it, and call on a Mrs. Marsett, was of the class of mixtures properly to be handed

She had her aspirations on behalf of her sex: she and Mademoiselle de Seilles discussed them; women were

to do this, do that:necessarily a means of instructing a girl to learn what they did do. If the lower part of

her face had been as reassuring to him as the upper, he might have put a reluctant faith in the puremindedness

of these aspirations, without reverting to her origin, and also to recent rumours of her father and Lady Grace

Halley. As it was, he inquired of the cognizant, whether an intellectual precocity, devoted by preference to

questions affecting the state of women, did not rather more than suggest the existence of urgent senses

likewise. She, a girl under twenty, had an interest in public matters, and she called on a Mrs. Marsett. To

He neighboured sagacity when he pointed that interrogation relating to Nesta's precociousness of the

intelligence. For, as they say in dactylomancy, the `psychical' of women are not disposed in their sensitive

early days to dwell upon the fortunes of their sex: a thought or two turns them facing away, with the

repugnant shiver. They worship at a niche in the wall. They cannot avoid imputing some share of foulness to

them that are for scouring the chamber; and the civilized male, keeping his own chamber locked, quite shares

their pale taper's view. The fullblooded to the fingertips, on the other hand, are likely to be drawn to the

subject, by noble inducement as often as by base: Nature at flood being the cause in either instance. This

young Nature of the good and the bad, is the blood which runs to power of heart as well as to thirsts of the

flesh. Then have men to sound themselves, to discover how much of Nature their abstract honourable

conception or representative eidolon of young women will bear without going to pieces; and it will not be

much, unless they shall have taken instruction from the poet's pen:for a view possibly of Nature at work to

cast the slough, when they see her writhing as in her ugliest old throes. If they have learnt of Nature's priest to

respect her, they will less distrust those rare daughters of hers who are moved by her warmth to lift her out of

slime. It is by her own live warmth that it has to be done: cold worship at a niche in the wall will not do

But facts were Dudley's teachers. Physically, morally, mentally, he read the world through facts;that is to

say, through the facts he encountered: and he was in consequence foredoomed to a succession of bumps; all

the heavier from his being, unlike the horned kind, not unimpressible by the hazy things outside his

experience. Even at his darkest over Nesta, it was his indigestion of the misconduct of her parents, which

denied to a certain still small advocate within him the right to raise a voice: that good fellow struck the

attitude for pleading, and had to be silent; for he was instinct; at best a stammering speaker in the Court of the

wigged Facts. Instinct of this Nesta Radnor's character would have said a brave word, but for her deeds

What to do? He was no nearer to an answer when the wintry dusk had fallen on the promenading crowds. To

do nothing, is the wisdom of those who have seen fools perish. Facts had not taught him, that the doing

nothing, for a length of days after the first shock he sustained, was the reason of how it came that Nesta

knitted closer her acquaintance with the `agreeable lady' she mentioned in her letter to Cronidge. Those

excellent counsellors of a mercantile community gave him no warnings, that the `masterly inactive' part, so

greatly esteemed by him for the conduct of public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid girl: nor

a hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the sensations are as violent as hysterical females to

block them from the understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a crux of his

meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers waved faded hands at her chances of inheriting

largely. Superb for the chances: but what of her offspring? And the other was a girl such as the lusty Dame

Dowager of fighting ancestors would have signalled to the heir of the House's honours for the perpetuation of

his race. No doubt: and the venerable Dame (beautiful in her oldlace frame, or say foliage, of the Ages

backward, temp: Ed: III.) inflated him with a thought of her: and his readings in modern books on heredity,

pure blood, physical regeneration, pronounced approval of Nesta Radnor: and thereupon instinct opened

mouth to speak; and a lockjaw seized it under that scowl of his presiding mistrust of Nature.

He clung to his mistrust the more because of a warning he had from the silenced natural voice: somewhat as

we may behold how the Conservatism of a Class, in a world of all the evidences showing that there is no stay

to things, comes of the intuitive discernment of its finality. His mistrust was his own; and Nesta was not; not

yet; though a step would make her his own. Instinct prompting to the step, was a worthless adviser. It spurred

He called at the Club for his cousin Southweare, with whom he was not in sympathy; and had information

that, Southweare said, "made the girl out all right." Girls in these days do things which the sainted

stayathomes preceding them would not have dreamed of doing. Something had occurred, relating to Major

Worrell: he withdrew Miss Radnor's name, acknowledged himself mistaken or amended his report of her, in

some way, not quite intelligible. Dudley was accosted by Simeon Fenellan; subsequently by Dartrey. There

was gossip over the latter gentleman's having been up before the magistrate, talk of a queer kind of stick, and

Dartrey said, laughing, to Simeon: "Rather lucky I bled the rascal;"whatever the meaning. She nursed one

of her adorations for this man, who had yesterday, apparently, joined in a streetfray; so she partook of the

At his hotel, at breakfast the next morning, a newspaper furnished an account of Captain Dartrey Fenellan's

participation in the strife, after mention of him as nephew of the Earl of Clanconan, "now a visitor to our

town;" and his deeds were accordant with his birth. Such writing was enough to send Dudley an eager listener

Dartrey, not debarred by considerations, that an allusion to Miss Radnor could be conveyed only in the most

delicately obscure manner, spared him no more than the plain English of his relations with her. Requested to

come to the Club, at a certain hour of the afternoon, that he might hear Major Worrell's personal contradiction

of scandal involving the young lady's name, together with his apology, etc.; Dudley declined: and he was

obliged to do it curtly; words were wanting. They are hard to find for wounded sentiments rendered complex

by an infusion of policy. His present mood, with the something new to digest, held the going to Major

Worrell a wrong step; he behaved as if the speaking to Dartrey Fenellan pledged him hardly less. And besides

he had a physical abhorrence, under dictate of moral reprobation, of the broadshouldered sinewy man,

THE day of Nesta's return was one of a number of late when Victor was robbed of his walk Westward by

Lady Grace Halley, who seduced his politeness with her various forms of blandishment to take a seat in her

carriage; and she was a practical speaker upon her quarter of the world when she had him there. Perhaps she

was right in sayingthough she had no right to saythat he and she together might have the world under

their feet. It was one of those irritating suggestions which expedite us up to a bald ceiling, only to make us

feel the gasbladder's tight extension upon emptiness. It moved him to examine the poor value of his aim, by

tying him to the contemptible means. One estimate involved the other, whichever came first. Somewhere he

had an idea, that would lift and cleanse all degradations. But it did seem as if he were not enjoying: things

pleasant enough in the passage of them were barren, if not prickly, in the retrospect.

He sprang out at the head of the park, for a tramp round it, in the gloom of the girdle of lights, to recover his

deadened relish of the thin phantasmal strife to win an intangible prize. His dulled physical system asked, as

with the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in the hurrying grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to

get, and what was the substance of his gains: what! if other than a precipitous intimacy, a deep crumbling

over deeper, with a little woman amusing him in remarks of a whimsical nudity; hardly more. Nay, not more!

he said; and at the end of twenty paces, he saw much more; the campaign gathered a circling suggestive

brilliancy, like the lamps about the winter park; the Society, lured with glitter, hooked by greed, composed a

ravishing picture; the little woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant; and her hand was a small soft

one, agreeable to fondleand avaunt! But so it is in war: we must pay for our allies. What if it had been, that

he and she together, with their united powers . . . ? He dashed the silly vision aside, as vainer than one of the

bubbleempires blown by boys; and it broke, showing no heart in it. His heart was Nataly's.

Let Colney hint his worst; Nataly bore the strain, always did bear any strain coming in the round of her

duties: and if she would but walk, or if she danced at parties, she would scatter the fits of despondency

besetting the phlegmatic, like this day's breeze the morning fog; or as he did with two minutes of the stretch

Full of the grandeur of that black pit of the benighted London, with its oceanvoice of the heart at beat along

the lighted outer ring, Victor entered at his old door of the two houses he had knocked into one:a surprise

"And could no more endure her absence from her Mammy O!" The songful satirical line spouted in him, to

He peeped in. It was dark. Sensible of presences, he gradually discerned a thick blot along the couch to the

right of the door, and he drew near. Two were lying folded together; mother and daughter. He bent over them.

His hand was taken and pressed by Fredi's; she spoke; she said tenderly: "Father." Neither of the two made a

movement. He heard the shivering rise of a sob, that fell. The dry sob going to the waste breath was Nataly's.

He left them. He had no thought until he stood in his dressingroom, when he said "Good!" For those two

must have been lying folded together during the greater part of the day: and it meant, that the mother's heart

had opened; the girl knew. Her tone: "Father," sweet, was heavy, too, with the darkness it came out of.

So she knew. Good. He clasped them both in his heart; tempering his pity of those dear ones with the

thought, that they were of the sex which finds enjoyment in a day of the mutual tear; and envying them; he

She would not be harsh on her father. She would say:he loved! And true: he did love, he does love; loves

He flicked a short wring of the hand having taken pressure from an alien woman's before Fredi pressed it, and

absolved himself in the act; thinking, How little does a woman know how true we can be to her when we

smell at a flower here and there! There they are, stationary; women the flowers, we the bee; and we are

faithful in our seeming volatility; faithful to the hive!And if women are to be stationary, the reasoning is

not so bad. Funny, however, if they here and there imitatively spread a wing, and treat men in that way? It is

a breach of the convention; we pay them our homage, that they may serve as flowers, not to be volatile

tempters. Nataly never had been one of the sort: Lady Grace was. No necessity existed for compelling the

world to bow to Lady Grace, while on behalf of his Nataly he had to . . . Victor closed the curtain over a gulf

revealed by an invocation of Nature, and showing the tremendous force he partook of so largely, in her

motive elements of the devourer. Horrid to behold, when we need a gracious presentation of the

circumstances. She is a splendid power for as long as we confine her between the banks: but she has a passion

to discover cracks; and if we give her headway, she will find one, and drive at it, and be through, uproarious

in her primitive licentiousness, unless we labour body and soul like Dutchmen at the dam. Here she was, and

not desired, almost detested! Nature detested! It had come about through the battle for Nataly; chiefly through

Mrs. Burman's tenacious hold of the filmy thread she took for life and was enabled to use as a means for the

perversion besides bar to the happiness of creatures really living. We may well marvel at the Fates, and tell

Dressed with his customary celerity, he waited for Nesta, to show her the lighted grand double

drawingroom: a further proof of how Fortune favoured him:she was to be told, how he one day expressed

a wish for greater space, and was informed on the next, that the neighbour house was being vacated, and the

day following he was in treaty for the purchase of it; returning from Tyrol, he found his place habitable.

Nesta came. Her short look at him was fond, her voice not faltering; she laid her hand under his arm and

walked round the spacious room, praising the general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes,

hangings, and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid musicstands, the firegrates and plaques, the ottomans, the

tone of neutral colour that, as in sound, muted splendour. He told her it was a reception night, with music:

"Mr. Sowerby?" said she. "He was to have escorted me back. He may have overslept himself."

She spoke it plainly; when speaking of the dear good ladies, she set a gentle humour at play, and comforted

him, as she intended, with a souvenir of her lively spirit wanting only in the manner of gaiety.

More deeply touched the next minute, he felt in her voice, in her look, in her phrasing of speech, an older,

much older daughter than the Fredi whom he had conducted to Moorsedge. "Kiss me," he said.

She turned to him fullfront, and kissed his right cheek and left, and his forehead, saying: "My love! my

papa! my own dear dada!" all the words of her girlhood in her new sedateness; and smiling: like the moral

crepuscular of a sunlighted day down a not totally inanimate Sunday London street.

That was well. And possibly at the present moment applying, with her cunning hand, the cosmetics and

Satisfied in being a superficial observer, he did not spy to see more than the world would when Nataly

entered the dining room at the quiet family dinner. She performed her part for his comfort, though not

prattling; and he missed his Fredi's delicious warble of the prattle running rilllike over our daily humdrum.

Simeon Fenellan would have helped. Then suddenly came enlivenment: a recollection of news in the

morning's paper. "No harm before Fredi, my dear. She's a young woman now. And no harm, so to speakat

least, not against the Sanfredini. She has donned her name again, and a villa on Como, leaving her

duque;paragraph from a Milanese musical Journal; no particulars. Now, mark me, we shall have her at

"It would be a pleasure," said Nataly. Her heart had a blow in the thought, that a lady of this kind would

She gave him low halfnotes of the little blue butterfly's imitation of the superb contralto; and her hand and

"Delicious!" he cried, his eyelids were bedewed at the vision of the three of them planted in the past; and here

again, out of the dark wood, where something had required to be said, and had been said; and all was happily

over, owing to the goodness and sweetness of the two dear innocents;whom heaven bless! Jealousy of their

naturally closer heartatheart, had not a whisper for him; part of their goodness and sweetness was felt to be

Nesta engaged to sing one of the old duets with her mother. She saw her mother's breast lift in a mechanical

effort to try imaginary notes, as if doubtful of her capacity, more at home in the dumb deep sigh they fell to.

Her mother's heroism made her a sacred woman to the thoughts of the girl, overcoming wonderment at the

She put a screw on her mind to perceive the rational object there might be for causing her mother to go

through tortures in receiving and visiting; and she was arrested by the louder question, whether she could

People with resounding names, waves of a steady stream, were announced by Arlington, just as in the days,

that seemed remote, before she went to Moorsedge; only they were more numerous, and some of the titles

had ascended a stage. There were great lords, there were many great ladies; and Lady Grace Halley shuffling

amid them, like a silken shimmer in voluminous robes. They crowded about their host where he stood. "He is

their Law!" Colney said, speaking unintelligibly, in the absence of the Simeon Fenellan regretted so loudly by

Mr. Beaves Urmsing. They had an air of worshipping, and he of swimming. There were also City magnates,

and Lakelands' neighbours: the gentleman representing Pride of Port, Sir Abraham Quatley; and Colonel

Corfe; Sir Rodwell and Lady Blachington; Mrs. Fanning; Mr. Caddis. Few young men and maids were seen.

Dr. John Cormyn came without his wife, not mentioning her. Mrs. Peter Yatt touched the notes for voices at

the piano. Priscilla Graves was a vacancy, and likewise the Rev. Septimus Barmby. Peridon and Catkin, and

Mr. Pempton took their usual places. There was no fluting. A famous Canadian lady was the principal singer.

A Galician violinist, zigzagging extreme extensions and contractions of his corporeal frame in execution,

and described by Colney as "Paganini on a wall," failed to supplant Durandarte in Nesta's memory. She was

asked by Lady Grace for the latest of Dudley. Sir Abraham Quatley named him with handsome emphasis.

Great dames caressed her; openly approved; shadowed the future place among them.

Victor alluded at night to Mrs. John Cormyn's absence. He said: "A hom*opathic doctor's wife!" nothing

more; and by that little, he prepared Nesta for her mother's explanation. The great London people, ignorant or

not, were caught by the strong tide he created, and carried on it. But there was a bruiting of the secret among

their set; and the one to fall away from her, Nataly marvellingly named Mrs. John Cormyn; whose marriage

was of her making. She did not disapprove Priscilla's behaviour. Priscilla had come to her and, protesting

affection, had openly stated, that she required time and retirement to recover her proper feelings. Nataly

smiled a melancholy criticism of an inconsequent or capricious woman, in relating to Nesta certain

observations Priscilla had dropped upon poor faithful Mr. Pempton, because of his concealment from her of

his knowledge of things: for this faithful gentleman had been one of the few not ignorant. The rumour was

Her mother's habitual serenity in martyrdom was deceiving. Nesta had a transient suspicion, that she had

grown, from use, to like the whirl of company, for oblivion in the excitement; and as her remembrance of her

own station among the crowding people was a hot flush, the difference of their feelings chilled her.

Nataly said: "It is tomorrow night again; we do not rest." She smiled; and at once the girl read woman's

armour on the dear face, and asked herself, Could I be so brave? The question following was a speechless

wave, that surged at her father. She tried to fathom the scheme he entertained. The attempt obscured her

conception of the man he was. She could not grasp him, being too young for knowing, that young heads

cannot obtain a critical hold upon one whom they see grandly succeeding: it is the sun's brilliance to their

Mother and daughter slept together that night, and their embrace was their world.

Nesta delighted her father the next day by walking beside him into the City, as far as the end of the

Embankment, where the carriage was in waiting with her maid to bring her back; and at his mere ejaculation

of a wish, the hardy girl drove down in the afternoon for the walk home with him. Lady Grace Halley was at

"Only," Victor bade her beware, "Mines are undulating in movement, and their heights are a preparation for

The day after and the day after, Lady Grace was present. She made play with Dudley's name.

This coming into the City daily of a girl, for the sake of walking back in winter weather with her father,

struck her as ambiguous: either a jealous foolish mother's device, or that of a weak man beating about for

protection. But the woman of the positive world soon read to the contrary; helped a little by the man, no

doubt. She read rather too much to the contrary, and took the pedestrian girl for perfect simplicity in her

tastes, when Nesta had so far grown watchful as to feel relieved by the lady's departure. Her mother, without

sympathy for the lady, was too great of soul for jealousy. Victor had his Nataly before him at a hint from

Lady Grace: and he went somewhat further than the exact degree when affirming, that Nataly could not

scheme, and was incapable of suspecting.Nataly could perceive things with a certain accuracy: she would

not stoop to a meanness."Plot? Nataly?" said he, and shrugged. In fact, the void of plot, drama, shuffle of

excitement, reflected upon Nataly. He might have seen as tragic as ever dripped on Stage, had he looked.

But the walk Westward with his girl, together with pride in a daughter who clove her way through all

weathers, won his heart to exultation. He told her: "Fredi does her dada so much good;" not telling her in

what, or opening any passage to the mystery of the man he was. She was trying to be a student of life, with

her eyes down upon hard earth, despite of her winged young head; she would have compassed him better had

he dilated in sublime fashion; but he baffled her perusal of a man of power by the simpleness of his

enjoyment of small things coming in his way;the lighted shops, the crowd, emergence from the crowd, or

the meeting near midwinter of a soft warm wind along the Embankment, and dark Thames magnificently

His flattery of his girl, too, restored her broken feeling of personal value; it permeated her nourishingly from

At times he touched deep in humaneness; and he set her heart leaping on the flash of a thought to lay it bare,

with the secret it held, for his help. That was a dream. She could more easily have uttered the words to

Captain Dartrey, after her remembered abashing holy tremor of the vision of doing it and casting herself on

noblest man's compassionateness; and her imagined thousand emotions;a rolling music within her, a

wreath of cloudglory in her sky;which had, as with virgins it may be, plighted her body to him for sheer

urgency of soul; drawn her by a single unwittingtobrain, consciousinblood, shy curl outward of the

sheathing leaf to the flowering of woman to him; even to the shore of that strange sea, where the maid stands

choosing this one man for her destiny, as in a trance. So are these young ones unfolded, shade by shade; and a

shade is all the difference with them; they can teach the poet to marvel at the immensity of vitality in `the

Her father shut the glimpse of a possible speaking to him of Mrs. Marsett, with a renewal of his eulogistic

allusions to Dudley Sowerby: the "perfect gentleman, good citizen;" prospective heir to an earldom besides.

She bowed to Dudley's merits; she read off the honorific pedimental letters of a handsome statue, for a sign to

She was unjust, as Victor could feel, though he did not know how coldly unjust. For among the exorbitant

requisitions upon their fellowcreatures made by the young, is the demand, that they be definite: no mercy is

in them for the transitional. And Dudleyand it was under her influence, and painfully, not ignoblywas in

Victor accused her of paying too much heed to Colney Durance's epigrams upon their friends. He quite joined

with his English world in its opinion, that epigrams are poor squibs when they do not come out of great guns.

Epigrams fired at a venerable nation, are surely the poorest of popgun paper pellets. The English kick at the

insolence, when they are not in the mood for pelleting themselves, or when the armed Foreigner is

overshadowing and bracing. Colney's pretentious and laboured Satiric Prose Epic of The Rival Tongues,

particularly offended him, as being a clever aim at no hitting; and sustained him, inasmuch as it was an acid

friend's collapse. How could Colney expect his English to tolerate such a spiteful diatribe! The suicide of Dr.

Bouthoin at San Francisco was the finishing stroke to the chances of success of the Serial;although we are

promised splendid evolutions on the part of Mr. Semhians; who, after brilliant achievements with bat and

ball, abandons those weapons of old England's modern renown, for a determined wrestle with our English

pronunciation of words, and rescue of the spelling of them from the printer. His headache over the present

treatment of the verb `To bid,' was a quaint beginning for one who had soon to plead before Japanese, and

who acknowledged now "in contrition of spirit," that in formerly opposing the scheme for an Academy, he

helped to the handing of our noble language to the rapid reporter of news for an apathetic public. Further, he

discovered in astonishment the subordination of all literary Americans to the decrees of their literary

authorities; marking a Transatlantic point of departure, and contrasting ominously with the unruly Islanders

"grunting the higgledypiggledy of their various ways, in all the porker's gutgamut at the rush to the

trough." After a week's privation of bat and ball, he is, lighted or not, a gas jet of satire upon his

countrymen. As for the `pathetic sublimity of the Funeral of Dr. Bouthoin,' Victor inveighed against an

impious irony in the overdose of the pathos; and the same might be suspected in Britannia's elegy upon him, a

strain of hot eulogy throughout. Mr. Semhians, all but treasonably, calls it, Papboat and Brandy:"our

English literary diet of the day:" stimulating and not nourishing. Britannia's mournful anticipation, that `The

shroud enwinding this my son is mine!' should the modern generation depart from the track of him who

proved himself the giant in mainly supporting her glory was, no doubt, a high pitch of the note of

Conservatism. But considering, that Dr. Bouthoin "committed suicide under a depression of mind produced

by a surfeit of unaccustomed dishes, upon a physical system inspired by the traditions of exercise, and no

longer relieved by the practice"to translate from Dr. Gannius:we are again at war with the writer's

reverential tone, and we know not what to think: except, that Mr. Durance was a Saturday meatmarket's

Nesta found it pleasanter to see him than to hear of his work: which, to her present feeling, was inhuman. As

little as our native public, had she then any sympathy for the working in the idea: she wanted throbs, visible

aims, the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the tale of slaughter periodically invading all

English classes as a flush from the undrained lower, Vikings allto frigid sterile Satire. And truly it is not a

fruitbearing rod. Colney had to stand on the defence of it against the damsel's charges. He thought the use of

the rod, while expressing profound regret at a difference of opinion between him and those noble heathens,

beneficial for boys; but in relation to their seniors, and particularly for old gentlemen, he thought that the

sharpest rod to cut the skin was the sole saving of them. Insensibility to Satire, he likened to the

hardmouthed horse; which is doomed to the worser thing in consequence. And consequently upon the lack

of it, and of training to appreciate it, he described his country's male venerables as being distinguishable from

"He is unsuccessful and embittered," Victor said to Nesta. "Colney will find in the end, that he has lost his

game and soured himself by never making concessions. Here's this absurd Serialit fails, of course; and

then he has to say, it's because he won't tickle his English, won't enter into a `frowzy complicity' with their

"ButI think of Skepseyhonest creatures respect Mr. Durance, and he is always ready to help them," said

"You are one of his exceptions. Marry a title and live in stateand then hear him! I am successful, and the

result of it is, that he won't acknowledge wisdom in anything I say or do; he will hardly acknowledge the

success. It is `a dirty road to success,' he says. So that, if successful, I must have rolled myself in mire. I

compelled him to admit he was wrong about your being received at Moorsedge: a bit of a triumph!"

Nesta's walks with her father were no loss of her to Nataly; the girl came back to her bearing so fresh and so

full a heart; and her father was ever prouder of her: he presented new features of her in his quotations of her

sayings, thoughtful sayings. "I declare she helps one to think," he said. "It's not precocity; it's healthy inquiry.

She brings me nearer ideas of my own, not yet examined, than any one else does. I say, what a wife for a

"She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not quite strong," said Nataly. "You have not seen . . . ?"

"Dudley Sowerby? He's at Cronidge, I believe. His elder brother's in a bad way. Bad business, this looking to

Let it be cast on Society, then! A Society opposing Nature forces us to these murderous looks upon

impediments. But what of a Society in the dance with Nature? Victor did not approve of that. He began,

under the influence of Nesta's companionship, to see the Goddess Nature there is in a chastened nature. And

this view shook the curtain covering his lost Idea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its

daylight: a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by the inexplicable tardiness of a

certain one to rise ascending to her spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling,

Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause of humanity. Her ascent,

considering her inability to do further harm below, was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner

almost as mysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having a slippery bit on it. Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he

had found his feet again. But there was a bruise where, to his honour, he felt tenderest. And Fredi away, he

might be down againfor no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery, one might guess, by a predecessor or

two. Tatatata and mum! Still, in justice to the little woman, she had been serviceable. She would be still

more so, if a member of Parliament now on his backhere we are with the murdereye again!

Nesta's never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, as an intimation of her bent of mind.

"And does my girl come to her dada today?" he said, on the fifth morning since her return; prepared with a

villainous resignation to hear, that this day she abstained, though he had the wish for her coming.

"Why, don't you know," said she, "we all meet to have tea in Mr. Durance's chambers; and I walk back with

you, and there we are joined by mama; and we are to have a feast of literary celebrities."

"Colney's selection of them! And Simeon Fenellan, I hope. Perhaps Dartrey. Perhaps . . . eh?"

She reddened. So Dudley Sowerby's unspoken name could bring the blush to her cheeks. Dudley had his

excuses in his brother's condition. His father's health, too, wasbut this was Dudley calculating. Where there

are coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; just as where there are complications. Odd, one

fancies it, that we walking along the pavement of civilized life, should be perpetually summoning Orcus to

"The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to light her to him through densest fogs as well as over

deserts," She declaimed a long sentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left the room

for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her mother's neck, murmuring: "Mother! mother!" a

cry equal to "I am sure I do right," and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line of her

TAKING Nesta's hand, on her entry into his chambers with her father, Colney Durance bowed over it and

kissed it. The unusual performance had a meaning; she felt she was praised. It might be because she made

herself her father's companion. "I can't persuade him to put on a greatcoat," she said. "You would defeat his

aim at the particular waistcoat of his ambition," said Colney, goaded to speak, not anxious to be heard.

He kept her beside him, leading her about for introductions to multiform celebrities of both sexes; among

them the gentleman editing the Magazine which gave out serially The Rival Tongues: and there was talk of a

dragonthroated public's queer appetite in Letters. The pained Editor deferentially smiled at her cheerful

mention of Delphica. "In book form, perhaps!" he remarked, with plaintive resignation; adding: "You read

But we are the elect, who see signification and catch flavour; and we are reminded of an insatiable monster

how sometimes capricious is his gorge. "He may happen to be in the humour for a shaking!" Colney's poor

consolation it was to say of the prospects of his published book: for the funny monster has been known to like

"He takes it kinder tickled," said Fenellan, joining the group and grasping Nesta's hand with a warmth that

thrilled her and set her guessing. "A taste of his favourite Cayenne lollypop, Colney; it fetches the tear he

loves to shed, or it gives him digestive heat in the bag of his literary receptaclefearfully relaxed and

enormous! And no wonder; his notion of the attitude for reading, is to lie him down on his back; and he has

in a jiffy the funnel of the Libraries inserted into his mouth, and he feels the publishers pouring their gallons

through it unlimitedly; never crying out, which he can't; only swelling, which he's obliged to do, with a

nonnutritious inflation; and that's his intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture of

the baillir d'eau; and he's doomed to perish in the worst bookform of dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have

offended his police or excise, who stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing

above proof is poured in; and there's your misfortune. He's not half a bad fellow, you find when you haven't

The celebrities were unaffectedly interested in a literary failure having certain merits; they discussed it, to

compliment the crownless author; and the fervider they, the more was he endowed to read the meanness

prompting the generosity. Publication of a book, is the philosopher's lantern upon one's fellows.

Colney was caught away from his private manufactory of acids by hearing Simeon Fenellan relate to Victor

some of the recent occurrences at Brighton. Simeon's tone was unsatisfying; Colney would have the word; he

was like steel on the grindstone for such a theme of our national grotesquesublime.

"That Demerara Supplejack, Victor! Don't listen to Simeon; he's a man of lean narrative, fit to chronicle

political party wrangles and suchlike crop of carcase prose: this is epical. In DRINK we have Old England's

organic Epic; Greeks and Trojans; Parliamentary Olympus, ennobled brewers, nasal fanatics, all the

machinery to hand. Keep a straight eye on the primary motives of man, you'll own the English produce the

material for proud verse; they're alive there! Dartrey's Demerara makes a pretty episode of the battle. I

haven't seen itif it's possible to look on it: but I hear it is flexible, of a vulgar appearance in repose, Jove's

lightning at one time, the thong of AEacus at another. Observe Dartrey marching off to the Station, for the

purpose of laying his miraculous weapon across the shoulders of a son of Mars, who had offended. But we

have his name, my dear Victor! His name, Simeon?Worrell; a Major Worrell: his offence being probably,

that he obtained military instruction in the Service, and left it at his convenience, for our poor patch and tatter

British Army to take in his place another young student, who'll grow up to do similarly. And Dartrey, we

assume, is off to stop that system. You behold Sir Dartrey twirling the weapon in preparatory fashion;

because he is determined we shall have an army of trained officers instead of infant amateurs heading heroic

louts. Not a thought of Beer in Dartrey!always unpatriotic, you'll say. Plato entreats his absent mistress to

fix eyes on a star: eyes on Beer for the uniting of you English! I tell you no poetic fiction. Seeing him on his

way, thus terribly armed, and knowing his intent, Venus, to shield a former favourite servant of Mars,

conjured the most diverting of interventions, in the shape of a young woman in a pokebonnet, and Skepsey

her squire, marching with a dozen or so, informing bedevilled mankind of the hideousness of our

hymnification when it is not under secluding sanction of the Edifice, and challenging criticism; and that was

hard by, and real English, in the form of bludgeons, wielded by a battalion of the national idol Bungay

Beervat's boys; and they fell upon the hymners. Here you fill in with pastoral similes. They struck the maid

adored by Skepsey. And that was the blow which slew them! Our little man drove into the press with a pair of

fists able to do their work. A valiant skiff upon a sea of enemies, he was having it on the nob, and suddenly

the Demerara lightened. It flailed to thresh. Enough to say, brains would have come. The Bungays made a

show of fight. No lack of blood in them, to stock a raw shilling's worth or gush before Achilles raging. You

perceive the picture, you can almost sing the ballad. We want only a few names of the fallen. It was the

carving of a ma�tre chef, according to Skepsey: rightleftand point, with supreme precision: they fell,

accurately sliced from the joint. Having done with them, Dartrey tossed the Demerara to Skepsey, and

washed his hands of battle; and he let his major go unscathed. Phlebotomy sufficient for the day!"

"Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece," Victor said. "He can't have joined

"They may suit one of your militant peacemakers," interposed Fenellan. "The most placable creatures alive,

"Suit him! They're the scandal of our streets." Victor was pricked with a jealousy of them for beguiling him

"Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality," said Colney. "You don't see elsewhere any vein in

movement movement," he harped on the word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted

to see. "Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on edge. They're honest foes of vice, and they

move:in England! Pulpitpreaching has no effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies. You may judge of

what you are by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I won't attempt to paintit would barely be decent; but

compare it with the spectacle of English frivolity, and you'll admit it to be the best show you make. It may

still be the saving of youon the level of the orderly ox: I've not observed that it aims at higher.And

talking of the pulpit, Barmby is off to the East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy, Skepsey tells me."

"Papa, you won't be angry with Skepsey if he has joined those people," said Nesta. "I'm sure he thinks of

"But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when they're allowed the chance here."

"Good!" Fenellan exclaimed. "And that upsets his placement of the modern national genders: Germany

Their circle widened. Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being led about and introduced to ladies.

They were encouraging with her. One of them, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of

feminine insurrection. She said: "I hear your praises from Mr. Durance. He rarely praises. You have shown

Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart. She speculated in the dark, as to whether her aim to serve

and help was not so friendless. And did Mr. Durance approve? But surely she stood in a glorious England if

there were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils. Oh! that is the broad free England where

gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of the meanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffer

She cried in her bosom: I feel! She had no other expression for that which is as near as great natures may

come to the conceiving of the celestial spirit from an emissary angel; and she trembled, the fire ran through

her. It seemed to her, that she would be called to help or that certainly they were nearing to an effacement of

the woefullest of evils; and if not helping, it would still be a blessedness for her to kneel thanking heaven.

Society was being attacked and defended. She could but studiously listen. Her father was listening. The

assailant was a lady; and she had a hearing, although she treated Society as a discrowned monarch on trial for

an offence against a more precious: viz., the individual cramped by brutish laws: the individual with the ideas

of our time, righteously claiming expansion out of the clutches of a narrow oldworld disciplinarianthat

giant hypocrite! She flung the gauntlet at externally venerable Institutions; and she had a hearing, where

horrification, execration, the foul Furies of Conservatism would in a shortly antecedent day have been hissing

and snakily lashing, hounding her to expulsion. Mrs. Marina Floyer gravely seconded her. Colney did the

same. Victor turned sharp on him. "Yes," Colney said; "we unfold the standard of extremes in this country, to

get a single step taken: that's how we move: we threaten death to get footway. Now, mark: Society's errors

A gentleman spoke. He began by admitting Society's errors. Nevertheless, it so distinctly exists for the

common good, that we may say of Society in relation to the individual, it is the body to the soul. We may

wash, trim, purify, but we must not maim it. The assertion of our individuality in opposition to the

Government of Societythis existing Societyis a toss of the cap for the erasure of our civilization, et

Platitudes can be of intense interest if they approach our case.But, if you please, we ask permission to

wash, trim, purify, and we do not get it.But you have it!Because we take it at our peril; and you, who

are too cowardly to grant or withhold, callup the revolutionary from the pits by your slackness:There was

a pretty hot debate. Both assailant and defendant, to Victor's thinking, spoke well, and each the right thing:

and he could have made use of both, but he could answer neither. He beat about for the cause of this

deficiency, and discovered it in his position. Mentally, he was on the side of Society. Yet he was annoyed to

find the attack was so easily answerable when the defence unfolded. But it was absurd to expect it would not

be. And in fact, a position secretly rebellious is equal to water on the brain for stultifying us.

Before the controversy was over, a note in Nataly's handwriting called him home. She wrote: "Make my

excuses. C. D. will give Nesta and some lady dinner. A visitor here. Come alone, and without delay. Quite

The visitor? plainly Dudley. Nataly's trusting the girl to the chance of some lady being present, was unlike

her. Dudley might be tugging at the cord; and the recent conversation upon Society, rendered one of its gilt

pillars particularly estimable.A person in the debate had declared this modern protest on behalf of

individualism to represent Society's Criminal Trial. And it is likely to be a long one. And good for the world,

that we see such a Trial!Well said or not, undoubtedly Society is an old criminal: not much more advanced

than the state of spiritual worship where bloody sacrifice was offered to a hungry Lord. But it has a case for

pleading. We may liken it, as we have it now, to the bumping lumberer's raft; suitable along torrent waters

until we come to smoother. Are we not on waters of a certain smoothness at the reflecting level?enough to

justify demands for a vessel of finer design. If Society is to subsist, it must have the human with the logical

argument against the cry of the freeflags, instead of presenting a block's obtuseness. That, you need not

hesitate to believe, will be rolled downward and disintegrated, sooner than later. A Society based on the

logical concrete of humane considerateness:a Society prohibiting to Mrs. Burman her wielding of a

The personal element again to confuse inquiry!And Skepsey and Barmby both of them bent on doing work

without inquiry of any sort! They were enviable: they were good fellows. Victor clung to the theme because it

hinted of next door to his lost Idea. He rubbed the back of his head, fancying a throb there. Are civilized

creatures incapable of abstract thought when their social position is dubious? For if so, we never can be quit

of those we forsake.Apparently Mrs. Burman's unfathomed power lay in her compelling him to summon

the devilish in himself and play upon the impish in Society, that he might overcome her.

"Nothing wrong?" he said, and saw the something. It was a favourable moment to tell her what she might not

at another time regard as a small affair. "News in the City today of that South London borough being

vacated. Quatley urges me. A death again! I saw Pempton, too. Will you credit me when I tell you he carries

his infatuation so far, that he has been investing in Japanese and Chinese Loans, because they are less

meateaters than others, and vegetarians are more stable, and outlast us all!Dudley the visitor?"

"To consult with me," she added. "My maid will go at ten to bring Nesta; Mr. Durance I can count on, to see

Victor nodded, saying: "I guess. And, my love, you will receive Mrs. John Cormyn tomorrow morning. I

can't endure gaps. Gaps in our circle must never be. Do I guess?I spoke to Colney about bringing her

Nataly sighed: "Ah! make what provision we will! Evil Mr. Sowerby has had a great deal to bear."

Her breast heaved, and the wave burst, but her restraining of tears froze her speech.

"Victor! Our Nesta! Mr. Sowerby is unable to explain. And how the Miss Duvidneys! . . . At that

Brighton!"The voice he heard was not his darling's deep rich note, it had dropped to toneless hoarseness:

"She has been permitted to make acquaintanceshe has been seen riding withshe has called upon

Oh! it is one of those abandoned women. In her house! Our girl! Our Nesta! She was insulted by a man in the

woman's house. She is talked of over Brighton. The mother!the daughter! And grant me this that never

was girl more carefully . . . never till she was taken from me. Oh! do not forget. You will defend me? You

will say, that her mother did with all her soul strive . . . It is not a rumour. Mr. Sowerby has had it

"Nesta must promise . . . But how it happened? How! An acquaintance withcontact with!Oh! cruel!"

Each time she ceased speaking, the wrinkles of a shiver went over her, and the tone was of tears coming, but

"An accident!" said Victor; "some misunderstandingthere can't be harm. Of course, she promiseshasn't

"Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey tomorrow. He knows: it is over the Clubs there; he will tell you,

before a word to Nesta. Innocent, yes! Mr. Sowerby has not to be assured of that. Ignorant of the character of

the dreadful woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything think her ignorant! She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is

indulgent. He does me justice. My duty to herI must defend myselfhas been my first thought. I said in

my prayersshe at least! . . . We have to see the more than common reasons why she, of all girls,

"Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman," said Victor. "It does not suit me to hear the word

`indulgent.' My dear, if you were down there, you would discover, that the talk was the talk of two or three

men seeing our girl ride byand she did ride with a troop: why, we've watched them along the parade, often.

He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, there was the gain of her being won to

Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was a moderation of it. She was kept

strung to confide in her girl by the recent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengthening comfort

they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturing perplexities and her abasement of the hours

For a girl of Nesta's head could not be deceived; she had come home with a woman's intelligence of the

world, hard knowledge of ita knowledge drawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she

dreaded to probe to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world's idea, that corruption must come

Nataly renewed her cry of despair: "The mother!the daughter!"her sole revelation of the heart's hollows

She thanked heaven for the loneliness of her bed, where she could repeat: "The mother!the daughter!"

hearing the world's words:the daughter excused, by reason of her having such a mother; the mother

unpitied for the bruiting of her brazen daughter's name; but both alike consigned to the corners of the world's

dustheaps. She cried out, that her pride was broken. Her pride, her last support of life, had gone to pieces.

The tears she restrained in Victor's presence, were called on to come now, and she had none. It might be, that

she had not strength for weeping. She was very weak. Rising from bed to lock her door against Nesta's entry

to the room on her return at night, she could hardly stand: a chill and a clouding overcame her. The quitted

Victor tried the handle of a locked door in the dark of the early winter morning. "The mother!the

daughter!" had swung a pendulum for some time during the night in him, too. He would rather have been

subjected to the spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were the dry torrentbed rolling

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache: "Though, upon my word, the best cure

for mama would be a look into Fredi's eyes!" he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, just a little

PLEASANT things, that come to us too late for our savour of the sweetness in them, toll ominously of life on

the last walk to its end. Yesterday, before Dudley Sowerby's visit, Nataly would have been stirred where the

tears we shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell when seeing her friend Mrs. John Cormyn enter her

boudoir and hearing her speak repentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John said: "You will believe I have suffered,

dear; I am half my weight, I do think:" and she did not set the smile of responsive humour moving; although

these two ladies had a key of laughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; held her hand, and at the parting

kissed her. She would rather have seen her friend than not: so far she differed from a corpse; but she was near

the likeness to the dead in the insensibility to any change of light shining on one who best loved darkness and

silence. She cried to herself wilfully, that her pride was broken: as women do when they spurn at the

wounding of a dignity they cannot protect and die to see bleeding; for in it they live.

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certain space for recovery combative. She said:

Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; I would humble myself and bless heaven

for being able to pay my debt what I can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank into

sensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud to phrase them.

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utter loneliness;an outcast from her family; daily,

and she knew not how, more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her girl;seemed

under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her by friends, was merely the light to show it.

Midday's post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating to be allowed to call on her next

day.We are not so easily cast off! Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had not been

Having fasted, she ate at lunch in her dressingroom, with some taste of the food, haunted by an accusation

of gluttony because of her eating at all, and a vile confession, that she was enabled to eat, owing to the receipt

of Priscilla's empty letter: for her soul's desire was to be doing a deed of expiation, and the macerated flesh

seemed her assurance to herself of the courage to make amends.I must have some strength, she said

Nesta's being in the house with her, became an excessive irritation. Doubts of the girl's possible honesty to

speak a reptile truth under question; amazement at her boldness to speak it; hatred of the mouth that could:

and loathing of the words, the theme; and abomination of herself for conjuring fictitious images to rouse real

emotions; all ran counterthreads, that produced a mad pattern in the mind, affrighting to reason: and then, for

its preservation, reason took a superrational leap, and ascribed the terrible injustice of this last cruel stroke to

the divine scourge, recognized divine by the selection of the mortal spot for chastisement. She clasped her

She said, smiling: I never felt my sin until this blow came! Therefore the blow was proved divine. Ought it

not to be welcomed?and she appearing no better than one of those, the leprous of the sex! And brought to

Nataly drank the poison distilled from her exclamations and was ice. She had denied herself to Nesta's

redoubled petition. Nesta knocking at the door a third time and calling, tore the mother two ways: to have her

girl on her breast or snap their union in a word with an edge. She heard the voice of Dartrey Fenellan.

He was admitted. "No, dear," she said to Nesta; and Nesta's, "My own mother," consentingly said, in tender

"Is it a very low woman?" Nataly asked him in a Church whisper, with a face abashed.

"My dear soul! You can't shake them off in that way. She is one of us. If we have the class, we can't escape

from it. They are not to bear all the burden because they exist. We are the bigger debtors. I tell you she is

"Do not make me hate your chivalry. This woman is a rod on my back. Provided only she has not dropped

"To my girl's name? Speak at once. But I know she has. She induced Nesta to go to her house. My girl was

Dartrey's forehead ridged with his old fury and a gust of present contempt. "I can tell you this, that the fellow

who would think harm of it, knowing the facts, is not worthy of touching the tips of the fingers of your girl."

"But what?" said Dartrey. "There was no pretence. Her style is not worse than that of some we have seen.

There was no effort to deceive. The woman's plain for you and me to read, she has few of the arts; one or two

tricks, if you like: and these were not needed for use. There are women who have them, and have not been

"Yes; I know!those ideas of yours!" Nataly had once admired him for his knightliness toward the weakest

women and the women underfoot. "You have spoken to this woman? She boasted of acquaintance with

He laughed to himself. "A clever question. There is a leaning to excitement of manner at times. It's not

Nataly took the unintended blow, and bowed to it; and still more harshly said: "What rank of life does the

"The class educated for a skittish career by your popular Stage and your Bookstalls. I am not precise?"

"Leave Mr. Durance. Is she in any degree commonly wellbred? . . . behaviour, talkher English."

"I trench on Mr. Durance in replying. Her English is passable. You may hear . . ."

"Everywhere, of course! And this woman of slipshod English and excited manners imposed upon Nesta!"

"She may. She's a better woman for having met her. Don't suppose we're for supernatural conversions. The

woman makes no show of that. But she has found a good soul among her sexher better self in youth, as

one guesses; and she is gratefulfeels farther from exile in consequence. She has found a lady to take her by

the hand!not a common case. She can never go to the utterly bad after knowing Nesta. I forget if she says

it; I say it. You have heard the story from one of your conventional gentlemen."

"A true gentleman. I have reason to thank him. He has not your ideas on these matters. Dartrey. He is very

"With reference to marriage. I'll own I prefer another kind of gentleman. I've had my experience of that kind

of gentleman. Many of the kind have added their spot to the outcasts abominated for uncleannessin holy

unction. Many?I won't say all; but men who consent to hear black words pitched at them, and help to set

good women facing away from them, are pious dolts or rascal dogs of hypocrites. They, if you'll let me quote

Colney Durance to you todayand how is it he is not in favour?they are tempting the Lord to turn the

pillars of Society into pillars of salt. Down comes the house. And priests can rest in sight of it!They ought

to be dead against the sanctimony that believes it excommunicates when it curses. The relationship is not

dissolved so cheaply, though our Society affects to think it is. Barmby's off to the East End of this London,

Victor informs me:good fellow! And there he'll be groaning over our vicious nature. Nature is not more

responsible for vice than she is for inhumanity. Both bad, but the latter's the worse of the two."

Dartrey sent a thought after his meaning. "Hardly that. Let it stand. He's only one with the world: but he

shares the criminal infamy for crushing hope out of its frailest victims. They're thatno sentiment. What a

world, too, look behind it! brutal because brutish. The world may go hang: we expect more of your

gentleman. To hear of Nesta down there, and doubt that she was about good work;and come complaining!

He had the privilege of speaking to her, remonstrating, if he wished. There are men who thinkmen!the

plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirty business. They depute it to certain officials. And your womenit's

the taste of the world to have them educated so, that they can as little take the humane as the enlightened

view. Except, by the way, sometimes, in secret; they have a sisterly breast. In secret, they do occasionally

think as they feel. In public, the brass mask of the Idol they call Propriety commands or supplies their

feelings and thoughts. I won't repeat my reasons for educating them differently. At present we have but half

Dartrey stopped. "Don't be disturbed," he added. "There's no ground for alarm. Not of any sort."

"Captain Marsett: will be Sir Edward. He came back from the Continent yesterday."

A fit of shuddering seized Nataly. It grew in violence, and speaking out of it, with a pause of sickly empty

Dartrey sprang to his legs. "My dear soul! dear friendone of the best! if we go on fencing in the dark,

there'll be wounds. Your way of taking this affair disappointed me. Now I understand. It's the disease of a

trouble, to fly at comparisons. No real one exists. I wished to protect the woman from a happier sister's

judgement, to save you from alarm concerning Nesta:quite groundless, if you'll believe me. Come, there's

plenty of benevolent writing abroad on these topics now: facts are more looked at, and a good woman may

join us in taking them without the horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claim distinction

from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go through adventures before she fixes, and be a creature of

honest intentions. Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did not favour the girl's multitude

of enemies. Your system of not dealing with facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say,

Victor recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for. And now I must go and have a

talk with thewhat a change from the blue butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor

"He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie down after talking. She has a child's

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular ejaculation which tames the senior whose heart is

for a dash of holiday. He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he

went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give him. Seeing her, the light of what

he now knew of her was an ennobling equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the

worldhis dream to discover in woman's form. She, the little Nesta, the tall pureeyed girl before him, was,

young though she was, already in the fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The

worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or

in voluntary, consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the

ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments higher than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by Mrs. Marsettnot incredulous of

the girl's heroism: that capacity he caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the

measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:but her beauty, or the form of beauty which was

hers, argued against her having set foot of thought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint

vowed to service along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of this earth. Nesta was of the

blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or woman comparable to gardenflowers, who can dare to touch to

lift the spotted of her sex? He was puzzled by Nesta's unlikeness in deeds and in aspect. He remembered her

eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her; presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind.

His doubts cleared off. Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character be attached to the man

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing? Her tones were singularly vibrating.

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, she said: "I fancy I am in disgrace with my mother."

She would have told him why: the words were at her lips. Previous to her emotion on the journey home, the

words would have come out. They were arrested by the thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in him

To spare pain, he said: "No misunderstanding with the dear mother will last the day through. Can I help?"

"But the fellow is not a captain; and he is a friend, an old friend, very old friend: he'll be tipped with grey in a

"Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling your friends by their names."

"Will you laugh?I have never quite known. My father desired it: and my desire is to please him. I think I

am vain enough to think I read through blinds and shutters. The engagementwhat there washas been, to

my reading, broken more than once. I have not considered it, to settle my thoughts on it, until lately: and now

I may suspect it to be broken. I have given causeif it is known. There is no blame elsewhere. I am not

"Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges the engagement to be broken?"

All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of sight drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of

wonderment. "Then I understand; it enlightens me. My own mother!my poor mother! he should have come

to me. I was the guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer. That, if in life were direct retribution!but the

"So my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames me!" Nesta sighed; she took a sharp breath. "You?

He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination and heavenly candour.

But he was admonished, that to speak high approval would not be honourable advantage taken of the rival

condemning; and he said: "Blame? Some think it is not always the right thing to do the right thing. I've made

"Glad to again," he responded. It was uttered airily and was meant to be as lightly done.

Nesta did not draw back her hand. "I feel strong when you press it." Her voice wavered, and as when we hear

a flask sing thin at the filling, ceased upon evidence of a heart surcharged. How was he to relax the

pressure!he had to give her the strength she craved: and he vowed it should be but for half a minute, half a

"Oldish men are the best friends for you, I suppose," he said; and her gaze turned elusive phrases to vapour.

He was compelled to see the fiery core of the raincloud lighting it for a revealment, that allowed as little as it

The sight was keener than touch and the run of blood with blood to quicken slumbering seeds of passion.

But here is the place of broken ground and tangle, which calls to honourable men, not bent on sport, to be

wary to guard the gunlock. He stopped the word at his mouth. It was not in him to stop or moderate the force

of his eyes. She met them with the slender unbendingness that was her own; a feminine of inspirited

manhood. There was no soft expression, only the direct shot of light, on both sides; conveying as much as is

borne from sun to earth, from earth to sun. And when such an exchange has come between the two, they are

Nesta felt it, without asking whether she was loved. She was his. She had not a thought of the word of love or

the being beloved. Showers of painful blissfulness went through her, as the tremors of a shocked frame, while

she sat quietly, showing scarce a sign; and after he had let her hand go, she had the pressure on it. The

quivering intense of the moment of his eyes and grasp was lord of her, lord of the day and of all days coming.

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a man untrusted for the character she worshipped.

But she could have given it to Dartrey, despite his love of another, because it was her soul, without any of the

He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number of steps which are countless miles and do not permit

the retreat across the desert behind; and he was in some amazement at himself, remindful of the different

nature of our restraining power when we have a couple playing on it. Yet here was this girl, who called him

up to the heights of young life again: and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no shrinking from the

women underfoot: for the reason, that she was a girl sovereignly pure, angelically tender. Was there a point of

"We have spoken," her mother replied, vexed by the unmaidenly allusion to that theme.

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?but that the, Why should I speak of you to

him?struck the louder note in her bosom: and then, What is there that this girl cannot guess!filled the

mother's heart with apprehensive dread: and an inward cry, What things will she not set going, to have them

discussed! and the appalling theme, sitting offensive though draped in their midst, was taken for a proof of

the girl's unblushingness. After standing as one woman against the world so long, Nataly was relieved to be

on the side of a world now convictedly unjust to her in the confounding of her with the shameless. Her mind

had taken the brand of that thought: And Nesta had brought her to it:And Dudley Sowerby, a generous

representative of the world, had kindly, having the deputed power to do so, sustained her, only partially

blaming Nesta, not casting them off; as the world, with which Nataly felt, under a sense of the protection

She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar to the tediously strained, who are being more than

commonly tried persecuted, as they say when they are not supplicating their tyrannical Authority for aid.

The world will continue to be indifferent to their view of it and behaviour toward it until it ceases to

These are moments when the faces we are observing drop their charm, showing us our perversion internal, if

we could but reflect, to see it. Very many thousand times above Dudley Sowerby, Nataly ranked Dartrey

Fenellan; and still she looked at him, where he sat beside Nesta, ungenially, critical of the very features,

jealously in the interests of Dudley; and recollecting, too, that she had once prayed for one exactly resembling

Dartrey Fenellan to be her Nesta's husband. But, as she would have said, that was before the indiscretion of

her girl had shown her to require for her husband a man whose character and station guaranteed protection

instead of inciting to rebellion. And Dartrey, the loved and prized, was often in the rebel ranks; he was

dissatisfied with matters as they are; was restless for action, angry with a country denying it to him; he made

enemies, he would surely bring down inquiries about Nesta's head, and cause the forgotten or quiescent to be

stirred; he would scarcely be the needed hand for such a quiver of the lightnings as Nesta was.

Dartrey read Nataly's brows. This unwonted uncomeliness of hers was an indication to one or other of our

HE read her more closely when Arlington brought in the brown paper envelope of the wiresto which the

mate of Victor ought to have become accustomed. She took it; her eyelids closed, and her features were

"Lakelands on fire?" Dartrey murmured to Nesta; and she answered: "I should not be sorry."

Nesta touched her arm: "Mother! even before Captain Dartrey, if you will let me!"she turned to

him:"before" . . . at the end of her breath she said: "Dartrey Fenellan. You shall see my whole heart,

"Victor returns by the last train. He telegraphs, that he dines with" She handed the paper to Dartrey.

"Marsett," he read aloud; and she flushed; she was angry with him for not knowing, that the name was a term

"It's to tell you he has done what he thought good," said Dartrey. "In other words, as I interpret, he has

completed his daughter's work. So we won't talk about it till he comes. You have no company this evening?"

"Oh! there is a pause tonight! It's nearly as unceasing as your brother Simeon's old French lady in the ronde

with her young bridegroom, till they danced her to pieces. I do get now and then an hour's repose," Nataly

"My dear, you are a good girl to call me Dartrey," the owner of the name said to Nesta.

Nataly saw them both alert, in the terrible manner peculiar to both, for the directest of the bare statements.

She could have protested, that her love of truth was on an equality with theirs; and certainly, that her regard

for decency was livelier. Pass the deficiency in a man. But a girl who could speak, by allusion, of Mrs.

Marsettof the existence of a Mrs. Marsettin the presence of a man: and he excusing, encouraging: and

this girl her own girl;it seemed to her, that the world reeled; she could hardly acknowledge the girl; save

She sent Nesta to her room when they went upstairs to dress, unable to endure her presence after seeing her

show a placid satisfaction at Dartrey's nod to the request for him to sleep in the house that night. It was not at

all a gleam of pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner of saying, One drop more in my cup of good

fortune!an absurd and an offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind that they are!

For were it known, and surely the happening of it would be known, that Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the

Nesta of no name, who was the abominable Mrs. Marsett's friend, a whirlwind with a trumpet would sweep

Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl's embrace, against whom her door was jealously locked. She

hoped those two would talk much, madly if they liked, during dinner, that she might not be sensible, through

any short silence, of the ardour animating them: especially glowing in Nesta, ready behind her quiet mask to

come brazenly forth. But both of them were mercilessly ardent; and a sickness of the fear, that they might fall

on her to capture her and hurry her along with them perforce of the allayed, once fatal, inflammable element

in herself, shook the warmth from her limbs: causing her to say to herself aloud in a ragged hoarseness, very

They had not been two minutes together when she descended to them. Yet she saw the girl's heart brimming,

either with some word spoken to her or for joy of an unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked,

without distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly another drop in Nesta's foolish

happy cup. Could it be all because Dartrey Fenellan countenanced her acquaintance with that woman? The

Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the contralto; and Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the

admission in her blank mind of the truth of man's list of charges against her sex, starting from their

capriciousness: for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had now a desire for company, for stolid

company or giddy, an ocean of it. This led to her thinking, that the world of serious moneygetters, and

feasts, and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the reverential Sunday service, will always ultimately prove

itself right in opposition to critics and rebels, and to anyone vainly trying to stand alone: and the thought

annihilated her; for she was past the age of the beginning again, and no footing was left for an outsider not

selfjustified in being where she stood. She heard Dartrey's praise of Nesta's voice for tearing her mother's

bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and it was hap hazard irony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed

Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. "Pray, go, dear," her mother said. Victor kissed his

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey's hand for the goodnight and deliberately putting her

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing done, was to do another? Nataly could merely

observe. A voice pertaining to no one present, said in her ear:Mothers have publicly slapped their

daughters' faces for less than that!It was the voice of her incapacity to cope with the girl. She watched

Nesta's passage from the room, somewhat affected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching her.

"And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!" Victor exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for

pitying his girl. "I promised Fredi she should never count a year without Highlands or Alps. You remember,

mama?down in the West Highlands. Fancy the dear bit of bundle, Dartrey!we had laid her in her bed;

she was about seven or eight; and there she lay wide awake.`What's Fredi thinking of?'`I'm thinking of

the tops of the mountains at night, dada.'She would climb them now; she has the legs."

"The Marsetts: yes:wellsuited couple enough. It's to happen before Winter endsat once; before

Christmas; positively before next Spring. Fredi's doing! He has to manage, arrange.She's a goodlooking

woman, good height, well rounded; wellbehaved, too: she won't make a bad Lady Marsett. Every time that

"Come to me before you go to bed," Nataly said, rising, her voice foundering; "Goodnight, Dartrey."

She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake hands with composure. Not only was it a nauseous

"Really Fredi's doingchiefly," said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the

smoking room. "I played the man of pomp with Marsettgood heavy kind of creature: attached to the

woman. She's the better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Marsett. I harped on Major Worrell:

my daughter insulted. He knew of itspoke of you properly. The man offered all apologies; has told the

Major he is no gentleman, not a fit associate for gentlemen:quite so: and has cut him dead. Will marry

her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can of the honour of my daughter's acquaintance. Rather comical

grimace, when he vowed he'd fasten the tie. He doesn't like marriage. But he can't give her up. And she's for

patronizing the institution. But she is ready to say goodbye to him: `rather than see the truest lady in the

world insulted:' her words. And so he swallows his dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish. Antecedents,

I suppose: has to stomach them. But if a man's fond of a womanif he knows he saves her from slipping

lowerand it's an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its wheels:I say, a woman who has a man

to lean on, unless she's as downright corrupt as two or three of the men we've known:upon my word,

Dartrey, I come round to some of your ideas on these matters. It's this girl of mine, this wee bit of girl in her

little nightshirt with the frill, astonishes me most:`thinking of the tops of the mountains at night!' She has

positively done the whole of this workmain part. I smiled when I left the house, to have to own our little

Fredi starting us all on the road. It seems, Marsett had sworn he would; amorous vow, you know; he never

came nearer to doing it. I hope it's his better mind now; I do hope the man won't have cause to regret it. He

speaks of Nestasort of rustic tone of awe. Mrs. Marsett has impressed him. He expects the title soon, will

leave the armythe poor plucked British army, as you call it!and lead the life of a country

squire:hunting! Well, it's not only the army, it's over Great Britain, with this infernal wealth of ours!and

all for pleasureeh?or Paradise lost for a sugar plum! Eh, Dartrey? Upon my word, it appears to me,

Esau's the Englishman, Jacob the German, of these times. I wonder old Colney hasn't said it. If we're not

plucked, as your regiments are of the officers who have learnt their work, we're emasculated:the nation's

"Ay, and your country squires and your manufacturers contrive to give the army a body of consumptive louts

"Sounds like old Colney," Victor remarked to himself. "But, believe me, I'm ashamed of the number of

servants who wait on me. It wouldn't so much matter, as Skepsey says, if they were trained to arms and

selfrespect. That little fellow Skepsey's closer to the right notion, and the right practice, too, than any of us.

With his Matilda Pridden! He has jumped out of himself to the proper idea of women, too. And there's a man

who has been up three times before the magistrates, and is considered a disorderly subjectone among the

best of English citizens, I declare! I never think of Skepsey without the most extraordinary, witless kind of

envyas if he were putting in action an idea I once had and never quite got hold of again. The match for him

is Fredi. She threatens to be just as devoted, just as simple, as he. I positively doubt whether any of us could

"All very well, but it's a rock ahead. We shall have to alter our course, my friend. You know, I dined with that

couple, after the private twenty minutes with Marsett:he formally propounded the invitation, as we were

close on his hour, rather late: and I wanted to make the woman happy, besides putting a seal of cordiality on

his good intentionspolitic! And subsequently I heard from her, thatyou'll think nothing of it! Fredi

"So we may say. You're dealing with Nesta Victoria. Spare me a contest with that girl, I undertake to manage

"In this case, she would argue, that her resolution to keep her promise would bind or help to bind Marsett to

"Odd, her mother has turned dead round in favour of that fellow Dudley Sowerby! I don't complain; it suits;

"Well, yes, one thinks or should think, that if you insist on having women rooted to the bed of the river,

"Your heterodoxy on that subject is a mania, Dartrey. We can't have women independent."

Victor mused: "It's wonderful: that little girl of mine! good height now: but what a head she has! Oh, she'll

listen to reason: only mark what I say:with that quiet air of hers, the husband, if a young fellow, will

imagine she's the most docile of wives in the world. And as to wife, I'm not of the contrary opinion. But qu�

individual female, supposing her to have laid fast hold of an idea of duty, it's he who'll have to turn the corner

second, if they're to trot in the yoke together. Or it may be an idea of service to a friendor to her sex! That

Mrs. Marsett says she feels for`bleeds' for her sex. The poor woman didn't show to advantage with me,

because she was in a fever to please:talks in jerks, hot phrases. She holds herself well. At the end of the

dinner she behaved better. Odd, you can teach women with hints and a lead. But Marsett's Marsett to the end.

Rather touching!the poor fellow said: Deuce of a bad lookout for me if Judith doesn't have a child!

Firstrate sportsman, I hear. He should have thought of his family earlier. You know, Dartrey, the case is to

be argued for the family as well. You won't listen. And for Society too! Off you go."

"Ah, well," said Victor. "But I may have to beg your help, as to the socalled promise to stand at the altar. I

She was considerately treated, and was aware of being dandled, that she might have sleep.

She consented to it, in a loathing of the topic.Those women invade uswe cannot keep them out! was her

inward cry: with a reverberation of the unfailing accompaniment:The world holds you for one of them!

Victor tasked her too much when his perpetual readiness to doat upon his girl for whatever she did, set him

exalting Nesta's conduct. She thought: Was Nesta so sympathetic with her mother of late by reason of a moral

This was her torture through the night of a labouring heart, that travelled to one dull shock, again and again

repeated:the apprehended sound, in fact, of Dudley Sowerby's knock at the street door. Or sometimes a

footman handed her his letter, courteously phrased to withdraw from the alliance. Or else he came to a scene

with Nesta, and her mother was dragged into it, and the intolerable subject steamed about her. The girl was

visioned as deadly. She might be indifferent to the protection of Dudley's name. Robust, sanguine, Victor's

child, she might her mother listened to a devil's whisper:but no; Nesta's aim was at the heights; she was

pure in mind as in body. No, but the world would bring the accusation; and the world would trace the cause:

Heredity, it would say. Would it say falsely? Nataly harped on the interrogation until she felt her existence

dissolving to a dark stain of the earth, and she found herself wondering at the breath she drew, doubting that

another would follow, speculating on the cruel force which keeps us to the act of breathing.Though I could

draw wild blissful breath if I were galloping across the moors! her worn heart said to her youth: and out of

ken of the world, I could regain a portion of my selfesteem.Nature thereat renewed her old sustainment

with gentle murmurs, that were supported by Dr. Themison's account of the virtuous married lady who chafed

at the yoke on behalf of her sex, and deemed the independent union the ideal. Nataly's brain had a short

gallop over moorland. It brought her face to face with Victor's girl, and she dropped once more to her

remorse in herself and her reproaches of Nesta. The girl had inherited from her father something of the

cataract's force which won its way by catching or by mastering, uprooting, ruining!

In the morning she was heavily asleep. Victor left word with Nesta, that the dear mother was not to be

disturbed. Consequently, when Dudley called to see Mrs. Victor Radnor, he was informed that Miss Radnor

Dudley came to Victor in the City about luncheon time. His perplexity of countenance was eloquent. He had,

before seeing the young lady, digested an immense deal: more, as it seemed to him, than any English

gentleman should be asked to consume. She now referred him to her father, who had spent a day in Brighton,

and would, she said, explain whatever there was to be explained. But she added, that if she was expected to

abandon a friend, she could not. Dudley had argued with her upon the nature of friendship, the measurement

of its various dues; he had lectured on the choice of friends, the impossibility for young ladies, necessarily

inexperienced, to distinguish the right class of friends, the dangers they ran in selecting friends unwarranted

"Miss Radnor saidI may be dense, I cannot comprehendthat the precepts were suitable for seminaries of

Pharisees. When it is a question of a young lady associating with a notorious woman!"

"Not notorious. You spoil your case if you `speak extremely,' as a friend says. I saw her yesterday. She

"Nesta will know when she is older; she will thank me," Dudley said hurriedly. "As it is at present, I may

reckon, I hope, that the association ceases. Her nameI have to consider my family."

"Good anchorage! You must fight it out with the girl. And depend upon thisyou're not the poorer for being

the husband of a girl of character; unless you try to bridle her. She belongs to her time. I don't mind owning

to you, she has given me a lead.Fredi'll be merry tonight. Here's a letter I have from the Sanfredini, dated

Milan, fresh this morning; invitation to bring the godchild to her villa on Como in May; desirous to embrace

her. She wrote to the office. Not a word of her duque. She has pitched him to the winds. You may like to

"Away to it, then!" said Victor. "You stand by me?we expect our South London borough to be open in

January; early next year, at least; may be February. You have family interest there."

"Personally, I will do my best," Dudley said; and he escaped, feeling, with the universal censor's angry spite,

that the revolutions of the world had made one of the wealthiest of City men the head of a set of Bohemians.

And there are eulogists of the modern time! And the man's daughter was declared to belong to it! A visit in

May to the Italian cantatrice separated from her husband, would render the maiden an accomplished flinger of

At home Victor discovered, that there was not much more than a truce between Nesta and Nataly. He had a

medical hint from Dr. Themison, and he counselled his girl to humour her mother as far as could be:

particularly in relation to Dudley, whom Nataly now, womanlike, after opposing, strongly favoured. How

are we ever to get a clue to the labyrinthine convolutions and changeful motives of the sex! Dartrey's theories

were absurd. Did Nataly think them dangerous for a young woman? The guess hinted at a clue of some sort to

"Mr. Sowerby! My dear, he is bound, bound in honour, bound at heart. You did not dismiss him?"

"I repeated the word he used. I thought of mother. The blood leaves her cheeks at a disappointment now. She

He had done it, though not in formal speech. Slow digestion of his native antagonism to these Bohemians, to

say nothing of his judicial condemnation of them, brought him painfully round to the writing of a letter to

Nataly; cunningly addressed to the person on whom his instinct told him he had the strongest hold.

She schooled herself to discuss the detested matter forming Dudley's grievance and her own with Nesta; and

Another interview ensued between Nesta and her suitor. Dudley bore no resemblance to Mr. Barmby, who

refused to take the word no from her, and had taken it, and had gone to do holy work, for which she revered

him. Dudley took the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more her mother or her father,

inspired by him, came interceding, her mother actually supplicating. So that the reality of Dudley's love rose

to conception like a London dawn over Nesta; and how, honourably, decently, positively, to sever herself

from it, grew to be an illvisaged problem. She glanced in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help; she had her wild

thoughts. Having once called him Dartrey, the virginal barrier to thoughts was broken; and but for love of her

father, for love and pity of her mother, she would have ventured the step to make the man who had her whole

being in charge accept or reject her. Nothing else appeared in prospect. Her father and mother were urgently

one to favour Dudley; and the sensitive gentleman presented himself to receive his wound and depart with it.

But always he returned. At last, as if under tuition, he refrained from provoking a wound; he stood there to

win her upon any terms; and he was a handsome figure, acknowledged by the damsel to be increasing in good

looks as more and more his pretensions became distasteful to her. The slight cast of sourness on his lower

features had almost vanished, his nature seemed to have enlarged. He complimented her for her "generous

benevolence," vaguely, yet with evident sincereness; he admitted, that the modern world is "attempting

difficulties with at least commendable intentions;" and that the position of women demands improvement,

consideration for them also. He said feelingly: "They have to bear extraordinary burdens!" There he stopped.

The sharp intelligence fronting him understood, that this compassionate ejaculation was the point where she,

too, must cry halt. He had, howeverstill under tuition, perhaps withdrawn his voice from the pursuit of

her; and so she in gratitude silenced her critical mind beneath a smooth conceit of her having led him two

steps to a broader tolerance. Susceptible as she was, she did not influence him without being affected herself

in other things than her vanity: his prudishness affected her. Only when her heart flamed did she disdain that

real haven of refuge, with its visionary mount of superiority, offered by Society to its elect, in the habit of

ignoring the sins it fosters under cloak;not less than did the naked barbaric time, and far more to the

vitiation of the soul. He fancied he was moulding her; therefore winning her. It followed, that he had the

lover's desire for assurance of exclusive possession; and reflecting, that he had greatly pardoned, he grew

A provoking evasion. He would rather have seen antagonism bridle and stiffen her figure. "Is one of them

"One is from my dear friend Louise de Seilles. She comes to me early next month."

"She writes to tell me, that Mr. Dartrey Fenellan has helped her in a way to make her eternally thankful."

The drag of his lips betrayed his enlightenment. He insisted on doubting. He demanded assurance.

The stings and scorpions and degrading itches of this nest of wealthy Bohemians enraged him.

"Are youI beg to askare you still:I can hardly think it Nesta!I surely have a claim to advise:it

cannot be with your mother's consent:in communication, in correspondence with . . . ?"

He could not but look the withering disgust of the modern world in a conservative gentleman who has been

lured to go with it a little way, only to be bitten. "I decline to believe it," he said with forcible sound.

"Married or not!" he cried, and murmured: "I have borne These may be Mr. Dartrey Fenellan's ideas;

they are not mine. I haveSomething at least is due to me. Ask any lady:there are clergymen, I know,

clergymen who are for upliftingquite right, but not associating:to call one of them a friend! Ask any

"You are." He added hastily: "Counsels of prudence:there is not a lady living who would tell you

otherwise. At all events, in public opinion, if it were knownand it would certainly be known,a lady, wife

or spinster, would sufferwould not escape theat least shadow of defilement from relationship, any

degree of intimacy with . . . hard words are wholesome in such a case:`touch pitch,' yes! My sense is

"Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You may depend upon it, the world is not wrong when it forbids

Dudley looked on this fair, as yet innocent girl; and contrasting her with the foulness of the subject she dared

discuss, it seemed to him, that a world which did not puff at her and silence, if not extinguish, was in a state

Remembering his renewed repentances in absence, he said: "I do hope you may come to see, that the views

"But do not distress her," Nesta implored him. "She is not well. When she has grown stronger, her kind heart

will move her to receive the lady, so that she may not be deprived of the society of good women. I shall hope

She had seen a rigidity smite him as she spoke; and so little startling was it, that she might have fancied it

expected, save for her knowing herself too serious to have played at wiles to gain her ends.

Surely I must now be free? she thought when he had covered his farewell under a salutation regretful in

A week later, she had the embrace of her Louise, and Armandine was made happy with a piece of Parisian

Winter was rapidly in passage: changes were visible everywhere; Earth and House of Commons and the

South London borough exhibited them; Mrs. Burman was the sole exception. To the stupefaction of

physicians, in a manner to make a sane man ask whether she was not being retained as an instrument for one

of the darker purposes of Providenceand where are we standing if we ask such things?she held on to her

February went by. And not a word from Themison; nor from Carling, nor from the Rev. Groseman

Buttermore, nor from Jarniman. That is to say, the two former accepted invitations to grand dinners; the two

latter acknowledged contributions to funds in which they were interested; but they had apparently grown to

consider Mrs. Burman as an establishment, one of our fixtures. On the other hand, there was nothing to be

feared from her. Lakelands feared nothing: the entry into Lakelands was decreed for the middle of April.

Those good creatures enclosed the poor woman and nourished her on comfortable fiction. So the death of the

member for the South London borough (fifteen years younger than the veteran in maladies) was not to be

called premature, and could by no possibility lead to an exposure of the private history of the candidate for

NATALY had fallen to be one of the solitary who have no companionship save with the wound they nurse, to

chafe it rather than try at healing. So rational a mind as she had was not long in outliving mistaken

impressions; she could distinguish her girl's feeling, and her aim; she could speak on the subject with Dartrey;

and still her wound bled on. Louise de Seilles comforted her partly, through an exaltation of Nesta.

Mademoiselle, however, by means of a change of tone and look when Dudley Sowerby and Dartrey Fenellan

were the themes, showed a too pronounced preference of the more unstable one: or rather, the man

adventurous out of the world's highways, whose image, as husband of such a daughter as hers, smote the

wounded mother with a chillness. Mademoiselle's occasional thrill of fervency in an allusion to Dartrey,

might have tempted a suspicious woman to indulge suppositions, accounting for the young Frenchwoman's

novel tenderness to England, of which Nesta proudly, very happily, boasted. The suspicion proposed itself,

and was rejected: for not even the fever of an insane body could influence Nataly's generous character, to let

Her thoughts were at this time singularly lucid upon everything about her; with the one exception of the

reason why she had come to favour Dudley, and how it was she had been smitten by that woman at Brighton

to see herself in her position altogether with the world's relentless, unexamining hard eyes. Bitterness added,

of Mrs. Marsett: She is made an honest woman!And there was a strain of the lower in Nataly, to reproach

the girl for causing the reflection to be cast on the unwedded. Otherwise her mind was open; she was of aid to

Victor in his confusion over some lost Idea he had often touched on latterly. And she was the one who sent

him ahead at a trot under a light, by saying: "You would found a new and more stable aristocracy of the

contempt of luxury:" when he talked of combating the Jews with a superior weapon. That being, in fact, as

Colney Durance had pointed out to him, the weapon of selfconquest used by them "before they fell away to

fleshpottery." Was it his Idea? He fancied an aching at the back of his head when he speculated. But his Idea

had been surpassingly luminous, alive, a creation; and this came before him with the yellow skin of a Theory,

bred, born of books. Though Nataly's mention of the aristocracy of selfdenying discipline struck a Lucifer in

Nesta likewise helped: but more in what she did than in what she said: she spoke intelligently enough to

make him feel a certain increase of alarm, amounting to a cursory secret acknowledgement of it, both at her

dealings with Dudley and with himself. She so quietly displaced the lady visiting him at the City offices. His

girl's disregard of hostile weather, and her company, her talk, delighted him: still he remonstrated, at her

coming daily. She came: nor was there an instigation on the part of her mother, clearly none: her mother

asked him once whether he thought she met the dreadful Brighton woman. His Fredi drove constantly to walk

back beside him Westward, as he loved to do whenever it was practicable; and exceeding the flattery of his

possession of the gallant daughter, her conversation charmed him to forget a disappointment caused by the

defeat and entire exclusion of the lady visiting him so complimentarily for his advice on stocks, shares,

mines, et c�tera. The lady resisted; she was vanquished, as the shades are displaced by simple apparition of

daylight. His Fredi was like the daylight to him; she was the very daylight to his mind, whatsoever their

theme of converse: for by stimulating that ready but vagrant mind to quit the leash of the powerful senses and

be �thereally excursive, she gave him a new enjoyment; which led to reflectionsa sounding of Nature,

almost a question to her, on the verge of a doubt. Are we, in fact, harmonious with the Great Mother when we

yield to the pressure of our natures for indulgence? Is she, when translated into us, solely the imperious

appetite? Here was Fredi, his little Fredi stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for all her fun and

her sail on wingslifting him to pleasures not followed by clamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet

discomposingly violent, appeals to Nature. They could be vindicated. Or could they, when they would not

bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himself stating it namelessly to his closest friendnot to

Simeon Fenellan. As for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him with shivers: Young Dudley would have

seemed a more possible confidant: and he represented the Puritan world.And young Dudley was getting

over Fredi's infatuation for the woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he saw a right enthusiasm

in it;in the abstract; if only the fair maid would drop an unseemly acquaintance. He had called at the office

"Never, dear father," came the smooth answer: a shocking answer in contrast with the tones. Her English was

as lucid as her eyes when she continued up to the shock she dealt: "Do not encourage a good man to waste his

thoughts upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry him. I do not know whether he would

marry me. He has my soul. I have no shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness, greatness of heart.

He is a respecter of womenof all women; not only the fortunate. He is the friend of the weaker

everywhere. He has been proved in fire. He does not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who

scorns people for doing:and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly. He is not one of the unwise

advocates. He measures the forces against them. He reads their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my

plans. He has not said, has not shown, he loves me. It is too high a thought for me until I hear it."

"Has your soul!" was all that Victor could reply, while the whole conception of Lakelands quaked under the

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank in dumbness. Her seeming

intuitionif it was not a perceptionof the point where submission to the moods of his nature had

weakened his character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious fear of his girl: and it

was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He

tried to think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effort to imagine a reproof, showed

him her spirit through her eyes: in her deeds too: she had already done work on the road:Colney Durance,

Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, strongly backing her, upholding her. Victor

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when he ventured. When Dudley, calling on

him in the City to discuss the candidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he might

regain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victor as audacious. It jarred in his

recollection, though the heir of the earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch. He appeared

to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; he offered himself; he made but one stipulation. Victor

regretfully assured him, he feared he could do nothing. The thought of his entry into Lakelands, with Nesta

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business as the braced swimmer on seas,

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta to be waiting for him, he reached

home, and found Nataly in her sittingroom alone. "Nesta was tired," she said: "we have had a scene; she

refuses Mr. Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, painfully; she blames him for

disturbing me; she will not see the right course:a mother reads her daughter! If my girl has not

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her think with regard to Victor's

daughterdaughter also of the woman whom her hard conscience accused of inflammability. "Here is a note

"Don't think to deceive me," said she. "I have not read the contents, I know them."

"The invitation at last, for tomorrow, Sunday, four p.m. Odd, that next day at eight of the evening I shall be

addressing our meeting in the Theatre. Simeon speaks. Beaves Urmsing insists on coming, Tory though he is.

Those Tories are jollier fellows thanwell, no wonder! There will be no surgical . . . the poor woman is very

Nataly was the first at the breakfasttable in the morning, a fair Sunday morning. She was going to Mrs. John

She returned five minutes before the hour of lunch, having left Nesta with Mrs. John. Louise de Seilles

undertook to bring Nesta home at the time she might choose. Fenellan, Mr. Pempton, Peridon and Catkin,

lunched and chatted. Nataly chatted. At a quarter to three o'clock Victor's carriage was at the door. He rose;

he had to keep an appointment. Nataly said to him publicly: "I come too." He stared and nodded. In the

carriage, he said: "I'm driving to the Gardens, for a stroll, to have a look at the beasts. Sort of relief. Poor

Up to the gate of the Gardens Victor was arguing to dissuade his dear soul from this very foolish, totally

unnecessary, step. Alighting, he put the matter aside, for good angels to support his counsel at the final

Bears, lions, tigers, eagles, monkeys: they suggested no more than he would have had from prints; they

sprang no reflection, except, that the coming hour was a matter of indifference to them. They were about him,

and exercised so far a distraction. He took very kindly to an old mother monkey, relinquishing her society at

sight of Nataly's heave of the bosom. Southward, across the park, the dread house rose. He began quoting

Colney Durance with relish while sarcastically confuting the cynic, who found much pasture in these

Gardens. Over Southward, too, he would be addressing a popular assembly tomorrow evening. Between now

and then there was a ditch to jump. He put on the sympathetic face of grief. "After all, a caged wild beast

hasn't so bad a life," he said.To be well fed while they live, and welcome death as a release from the

maladies they develop in idleness, is the condition of wealthy people:creatures of prey? horrible thought!

yet allied to his Idea, it seemed. Yes, but these good caged beasts here set them an example, in not troubling

relatives and friends when they come to the gasp! Mrs. Burman's invitation loomed as monstrousa final act

of her cruelty. His skin pricked with dews. He thought of Nataly beside him, jumping the ditch with him, as a

reliefif she insisted on doing it. He hoped she would not, for the sake of her composure.

It was a ditch void of bottom. But it was a mere matter of an hour, less. The state of health of the invalid

could bear only a few minutes. In any case, we are sure that the hour will pass. Our own arrive? Certainly.

"Capital place for children!" he exclaimed. And here startlingly before him in the clusters of boys and girls,

was the difference between young ones and their elders feeling quite as young: the careless youngsters have

not to go and sit in the room with a virulent old woman, and express penitence and what not, and hear words

Attention to the children precipitated him upon acquaintances, hitherto cleverly shunned. He nodded them

Such anodyne as he could squeeze from the incarcerated wild creatures, was exhausted. He fell to work at

Nataly's `aristocracy of the contempt of luxury'; signifying, that we the wealthy will not exist to pamper flesh,

but we live for the promotion of brotherhood:ay, and that our England must make some great moral stand,

if she is not to fall to the rear and down. Unuttered, it caught the skirts of the Idea: it evaporated when

spoken. Still, this theme was almost an exorcism of Mrs. Burman. He consulted his watch. "Thirteen minutes

Seated in the carriage, he told her he had never felt the horror of that place before. "Put me down at the corner

After entreaties and reasons intermixed, to melt her resolve, he saw she was firm: and he asked himself,

whether he might not be constitutionally better adapted to persuade than to dissuade. The question thumped.

Having that house of drugs in view, he breathed more freely for the prospect of feeling his Nataly near him

"You really insist, dear love?" he appealed to her: and her answer: "It must be," left no doubt: though he

chose to say: "Not because of standing by me?" And she said: "For my peace, Victor." They stepped to the

Seventeen houses of the terrace fronting the park led to the funereal one: and the bell was tolled in the breast

of each of the couple advancing with an air of calmness to the inevitable black door.

Jarniman opened it. "His mistress was prepared to see them." Not like one near death.They were met in

the hall by the Rev. Groseman Buttermore. "You will find a welcome," was his reassurance to them, gently

delivered, on the stoop of a large person. His whispered tones were more agreeably deadening than his words.

"Soon over," he murmured to Nataly, with a compassionate exclamation for the invalid.

They rounded the open door. They were in the drawingroom. It was furnished as in the old time, gold and

white, looking new; all the same as of old, save for a division of silken hangings; and these were pale blue:

the colour preferred by Victor for a bedroom. He glanced at the ceiling, to bathe in a blank space out of

memory. Here she lived, here she slept, behind the hangings. There was refreshingly that little difference in

the arrangement of the room. The corner Northward was occupied by the grand piano; and Victor had an

inquiry in him:tuned? He sighed, expecting a sight to come through the hangings. Sensible that Nataly

trembled, he perceived the Rev. Groseman Buttermore half across a heap of shawlswathe on the sofa.

Mrs. Burman was present; seated. People may die seated; she had always disliked the extended posture;

except for the night's rest, she used to say; imagining herself to be not inviting the bolt of sudden death, in her

attitude, when seated by day:and often at night the poor woman had to sit up for the qualms of her

dyspepsia!But I'm bound to think humanely, be Christian, be kind, benignant, he thought, and he fetched

the spirit required, to behold her face emerge from a pale blue silk veiling; as it were, the inanimate wasted

Wasted though it was, the face of the wide orbits for sunken eyes was distinguishable as the one once known.

If the world could see it and hear, that it called itself a man's wife! She looked burnt out.

Two chairs had been set to front the sofa. Execution there! Victor thought, and he garrotted the unruly mind

of a man really feeling devoutness in the presence of the shadow thrown by the dread Shade.

"Ten minutes," Mr. Buttermore said low, after obligingly placing them on the chairs.

No voice came. They were unsure of being seen by the floating grey of eyes patient to gaze from their vast

distance. Big drops fell from Nataly's. Victor heard the French timepiece on the mantelshelf, where a

familiar gilt Cupid swung for the seconds: his own purchase. The time of day on the clock was wrong; the

Nataly's mouth was taking breath of anguish at moments. More than a minute of the terrible length of the

A quaver sounded. "You have come." The voice was articulate, thinner than the telephonic, transAtlantic by

Another minute must have gone in the silence. And when we get to five minutes we are on the descent,

rapidly counting our way out of the house, into the fresh air, where we were half an hour back, among those

They were certainly now on the five minutes. Now for the slide downward and outward! Nataly should never

"Old customs with me, always!" he responded. "The first of April, always. White is a favourite. Pale blue,

too. But I fearI hope you have not distressing nights? In my family we lay great stress on the nights we

pass. My cousins, the Miss Duvidneys, go so far as to judge of the condition of health by the nightly record."

Mrs. Burman communed within or slept. "Victor, Natalia, we will pray," she said.

The two women mutely praying, pulled Victor into the devotional hush. It acted on him like the silent spell of

service in a Church. He forgot his estimate of the minutes, he formed a prayer, he refused to hear the Cupid

swinging, he droned a sound of sentences to deaden his ears. Ideas of eternity rolled in semblance of

enormous clouds. Death was a black bird among them. The piano rang to Nataly's young voice and his. The

gold and white of the chairs welcomed a youth suddenly enrolled among the wealthy by an enamoured old

lady on his arm. Cupid tickticked.Poor soul! poor woman! How little we mean to do harm when we do an

injury! An incomprehensible world indeed at the bottom and at the top. We get on fairly at the centre. Yet it

is there that we do the mischief making such a riddle of the bottom and the top. What is to be said! Prayer

quiets one. Victor peered at Nataly fervently on her knees and Mrs. Burman bowed over her knotted fingers.

The earnestness of both enforced an effort at a phrased prayer in him, Plunging through a wave of the scent of

Mar�chale, that was a tremendous memory to haul him backward and forward, he beheld his prayer dancing

across the furniture; a diminutive thin black figure, elfish, irreverent, appallingly unlike his proper emotion;

and he brought his hands just to touch, and got to the edge of his chair, with spilt knees. At once the figure

vanished. By merely looking at Nataly, he passed into her prayer. A look at Mrs. Burman made it personal,

his own. He heard the cluck of a horrible sob coming from him. After a repetition of his short form of prayer

deeply stressed, he thanked himself with the word "sincere," and a queer side thought on our human

Nataly resumed her seat. Mrs. Burman had raised her head. She said: "We are at peace." She presently said,

with effort: "It cannot last with me. I die in nature's way. I would bear forgiveness with me, that I may have it

above. I give it here, to you, to all. My soul is cleansed, I trust. Much was to say. My strength will not. Unto

The Rev. Groseman Buttermore was moving on slippered step to the back of the sofa. Nataly dropped before

the unseeing, scarce breathing, lady for an instant. Victor murmured an adieu, grateful for being spared the

ceremonial shake of hands. He turned away, then turned back, praying for power to speak, to say that he had

found his heart, was grateful, would hold her in memory. He fell on a knee before her, and forgot he had done

so when he had risen. They were conducted by the rev. gentleman to the halldoor: he was not speechless.

TO a man issuing from a mortuary where a skull had voice, London may be restorative as air of Summer

Alps. It is by contrast blooming life. Observe the fellowship of the houses shoulder to shoulder; and that

straight ascending smoke of the preparation for dinner; and the good policeman yonder, blessedly idle on an

orderly Sabbath evening; and the families of the minor people trotting homeward from the park to tea; here

and again an amiable carriage of the superimposed people driving to pay visits; they are so social, friendly,

inviting to him; they strip him of the shroud, sing of the sweet old world. He cannot but be moved to the

A stupefaction at the shock of the positive reminder, echo of the fact still shouting in his breast, that he had

seen Mrs. Burman, and that the interview was overthe leaf turned and the book shutheld Victor in a

silence until his gratefulness to London City was borne down by the more human burst of gratitude to the

dying woman, who had spared him, as much as she could, a scene of the convulsive pathetic, and had not

called on him for any utterance of penitence. That wormlike thread of voice came up to him still from

sextondepths: it sounded a larger forgiveness without the word. He felt the sorrow of it all, as he told

Nataly; at the same time bidding her smell "the marvellous oxygen of the park." He declared it to be quite

She slightly pressed his arm for answer. Perhaps she did not feel so deeply? She was free of the horrid

associations with the scent of Mar�chale. At any rate, she had comported herself admirably!

Victor fancied he must have shuddered when he passed by Jarniman at the door, who was almost now seeing

his mistress's ghostwould have the privilege tomorrow. He called a cab and drove to Mrs. John Cormyn's,

at Nataly's request, for Nesta and mademoiselle; enjoying the Londonized odour of the cab. Nataly did not

respond to his warm and continued eulogies of Mrs. Burman; she rather disappointed him. He talked of the

gold and white furniture, he just alluded to the Cupid: reserving his mental comment, that the timepiece was

all astray, the Cupid regular on the swing:strange, touching, terrible, if really the silly gilt figure

symbolized! . . . And we are a silly figure to be sitting in a cab imagining such things!When Nesta and

mademoiselle were opposite, he had the pleasure to see Nataly take Nesta's hand and hold it until they

reached home. Those two talking together in the brief words of their deep feeling, had tones that were

singularly alike: the mezzosoprano filial to the divine maternal contralto. Those two dear ones mounted to

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart together once more; each looked the happier for it.

Dartrey was among their dinnerguests, and Nataly took him to her little blue room before she went to bed.

He did not speak of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to keep her from excitement. "My dear

fellow, if you had seen her with Mrs. Burman!" Victor said, and loudly praised her coolness. She was never

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She began panting at a word about Mr. Barmby's ready

services. When, however, she related the state of affairs between Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each of

them to her, he said, embracing her: "Your wisdom shall guide us, my love," and almost extinguished a

She sighed: "If one could think, that a girl with Nesta's revolutionary ideas of the duties of women, and their

powers, would be safeor at all rightly guided by a man who is both one of the noblest and the wildest in

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to dazzle the gossips, crack on the sky in a futile

She was distressed; she moaned: "My girl! my girl! I should wish to leave her with one who is more

fixedthe oldfashioned husband. New ideas must come in politics, but in Society!and for women! And

the young having heads, are the most endangered. Nesta vows her life to it! Dartrey supports her!"

"See Colney," said Victor. "Odd, Colney does you good; some queer way he has. Though you don't care for

his Rival Tongues, and the last number was funny, with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing

a farewell to his cricketbat, before he whirls it away to Neptuneand the blue hand of his nation's

protecting God observed to seize it!Dead failure with the public, of course! However, he seems to seem

wise with you. The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics monthly. See Colney tomorrow, my

love. Now go to sleep. We have got over the worst. I speak at my Meeting tomorrow and am a

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought so, when awaking to the conception of a people

solidified, rich and poor, by the common pride of simple manhood. But it was not coloured, not a luminous

globe: and the people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to meet the Future. It looked like a

paragraph in a newspaper, upon which a Leading Article sits, dutifully arousing the fat worm of sarcastic

humour under the ribs of cradled citizens, with an exposure of its excellent folly. He would not have it

laughed at; still he could not admit it as more than a skirt of the robe of his Idea. For let none think him a

mere City merchant, millionaire, boonfellow, or musicloving man of the world. He had ideas to shoot across

future Ages;provide against the shrinkage of our Coalbeds; against, and for, if you like, the thickening,

jumbling, threatening excess of population in these Islands, in Europe, America, all over our habitable sphere.

Now that Mrs. Burman, on her way to bliss, was no longer the dungeoncell for the man he would show

himself to be, this name for successes, corporate nucleus of the enjoyments, this Victor Montgomery Radnor,

intended impressing himself upon the world as a factory of ideas. Colney's insolent charge, that the English

have no imaginationa doomed race, if it be true!would be confuted. For our English require but the

lighted leadership to come into cohesion, and step ranked, and chant harmoniously the song of their

benevolent aim. And that astral head giving, as a commencement, example of the right use of riches, the

Surely he had here the Idea? He had it so warmly, that his bathwater heated. Only the vision was wanted.

On London Bridge he had seen ita great thing done to the flash of brilliant results. That was after a fall.

Come to us with no superstitious whispers of indications and significations in the fall!But there had

certainly been a moral fall, fully to the level of the physical, in the maintaining of that scheme of Lakelands,

now ruined by his incomprehensible Nestawho had saved him from falling further. His bathwater chilled.

He jumped out and rubbed furiously with his towels and fleshbrushes, chasing the Idea for simple warmth,

to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with the cry: But no one can say I do not love my

Nataly! And he tested it to prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than the

devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts for surpassing the latter tedious

performance. His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making of money, the whole year of

an erected Lakelands, notwithstanding uninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it

were a blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it is in prospect. A black agent, not

willingly enlisted, yet pointing to proofs of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him we owe

him nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understanding of Nature: and still the fellow thumps

and alarums at a midnight door we are astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Would

other men be so sensitive to him? Victor was appeased by the assurance of his possession of an exceptionally

scrupulous conscience; and he settled the debate by thinking: After all, for a man like me, battling

incessantly, a kind of Vesuvius, I must havecan't be starved, must be fedthough, pah! But I'm not to be

questioned like other men.But how about an aristocracy of the contempt of distinctions?But there is no

escaping distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence.And indulges?Say, an exceptional

nature!Supposing a certain beloved woman to pronounce on the case?She cannot: no woman can be a

just judge of it.He cried: My love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy to right her today, to

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor entered into it, condemned to swing, and be a thrall.

His intensity of sensation launched him on an eternity of the swinging in ridiculous nakedness to the measure

of Time gone crazy. He had to correct a reproof of Mrs. Burman, as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down

to breakfast, hoping he might hear of that clock stopped, and that sickening motion with it.

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly inviting to her villa over Como, acted on him at

breakfast like the waving of a banner. "We go," Victor said to Nataly, and flatteredup a smile about her

lipstoo much a resurrection smile. There was talk of the Meeting at the theatre: Simeon Fenellan had

spoken there in the cause of the deceased Member, was known, and was likely to have a good reception. Fun

"And my darling will hear her husband speak tonight," he whispered as he was departing; and did a

mischief, he had to fear, for a shadowy knot crossed Nataly's forehead, she seemed paler. He sent back Nesta

Their dinnerhour was early; Simeon Fenellan, Colney Durance, and Mr. Peridonpleasing to Nataly for his

faithful siege of the French fortresswere the only guests. When they rose, Nataly drew Victor aside. He

came dismayed to Nesta. She ran to her mother. "Not hear papa speak? Oh, mother, mother! Then I stay with

"My naughty girl is not to poke her fun at orators," Nataly said. "No, dearest; it would agitate me to go. I'm

Nataly's eyes wandered to fall on Colney. He proposed to give her his company. She declined it. Nesta

ventured another entreaty, either that she might be allowed to stay or have her mother with her at the

"My love," Nataly said, "the thought of the Meeting" She clasped at her breast; and she murmured: "I

shall be comforted by your being with him. There is no danger there. But I shall be happy, I shall be at peace

Colney persuaded her to have him for companion. Mr. Peridon, who was to have driven with Nesta and

mademoiselle, won admiration by proposing to stay for an hour and play some of Mrs. Radnor's favourite

pieces. Nesta and Victor overbore Nataly's objections to the lover's generosity. So Mr. Peridon was left. Nesta

came hurrying back from the step of the carriage to kiss her mother again, saying: "Just one last kiss, my

own! And she's not to look troubled. I shall remember everything to tell my own mother. It will soon be

Nesta called her father into the passage, bidding him prohibit any delivery to her mother of news at the door.

Victor summoned his recollections and assured her he had noticed, as he believed he had. "The dear heart of

her is fretting for the night to be over! And think!seven days, and she is in Lakelands. A fortnight, and we

have our first Concert. Durandarte! Oh, the dear heart'll be at peace when I tell her of a triumphant Meeting.

"One critic the less for you!" said Nesta. Skepsey was to meet her carriage at the theatre.

Ten minutes later, Victor and Simeon Fenellan were proceeding thitherward on foot.

"I have my speech," said Victor. "You prepare the way for me, following our influential friend Dubbleson;

Colewort winds up; anyone else they shout for. We shall have a great evening. I suspect I shall find Themison

or Jarniman when I get home. You don't believe in intimations? I've had crapy processions all day before my

"He'll come. He's in one of his black moods: not temper. He's got a notion he killed his wife by dragging her

to Africa with him. She was not only ready to go, she was glad to go. She had a bit of the heroine in her and a

"Tell Nataly that," said Victor. "And tell her about Dartrey. Harp on it. Once she was all for him and our girl.

But it's a womanthough the dearest! I defy anyone to hit on the cause of their changes. We must make the

best of things, if we're for swimming. The task for me tonight will be, to keep from rolling out all I've got in

my head. And I'm not revolutionary, I'm for stability. Only I do see, that the firm steppingplace asks for a

long stride to be taken. One can't get the English to take a strideunless it's for a foot behind them:bother

old Colney! Too timid, or too scrupulous, down we go into the mire. There!But I want to say it! I want to

save the existing order. I want Christianity, instead of the Mammonism we're threatened with. Great fortunes

now are becoming the giants of old to stalk the land: or medi�val Barons. Dispersion of wealth, is the secret.

Nataly's of that mind with me. A decent poverty! She's rather wearying, wants a change. I've a steamyacht

in my eye, for next month on the Mediterranean. All our set. She likes quiet. I believe in my political recipe

He thumped on a method he had for preserving aristocracy true aristocracy, amid a positively democratic

"It appears to me, you're on the road of Priscilla Graves and Pempton," observed Simeon. "Strike off

Priscilla's viands and friend Pempton's couple of glasses, and there's your aristocracy established; but with

"Upon my word, you talk like old Colney, except for a twang of your own," said Victor. "Colney sours at

every fresh number of that Serial. The last, with Delphica detecting the plot of Falarique, is really not so bad.

The four disguised members of the Com�die Fran�aise on board the vessel from San Francisco, to declaim

and prove the superior merits of the Gallic tongue, jumped me to bravo the cleverness. And Bobinikine

turning to the complexion of the remainder of cupboard dumpling discovered in an emigrant's housetolet!

And SemhiansI forget what: and Mytharete's forefinger over the bridge of his nose, like a pensive vulture

on the skull of a desert camel! But, I complain, there's nothing to make the English love the author; and it's

Their coming upon Westminster Bridge changed the theme. Victor wished the Houses of Parliament to catch

the beams of sunset. He deferred to the suggestion, that the Hospital's doing so seemed appropriate.

"I'm always pleased to find a decent reason for what is," he said. Then he queried: "But what is, if we look at

it, and while we look, Simeon? She may be goingor she's gone already, poor woman! I shall have that

scene of yesterday everlastingly before my eyes, like a dropcurtain. Only, you know, Simeon, they don't feel

the end, as we in health imagine. Colney would say, we have the spasms and they the peace. I've a mind to

send up to Regent's Park with inquiries. It would look respectful. God forgive me!the poor woman perverts

me at every turn. Though I will say, a certain horror of death I hadshe whisked me out of it yesterday. I

"Only to remark, that if the thing's done for us, we haven't it so much on our sensations."

"More, if we're sympathetic. But that compels us to be philosophicor who could live! Poor woman!"

"Tush! Now for the South side of the Bridges; and I tell you, Simeon, what I can't mention tonight: I mean

to enliven these poor dear people on their forsaken South of the City. I've my scheme. Elected or not, I shall

Fenellan went to work with that remark in his brain for the speech he was to deliver. He could not but reflect

on the genial man's willingness and capacity to do deeds of benevolence, constantly thwarted by the position

They were received at the verge of the crowd outside the theatredoors by Skepsey, who wriggled, tore and

clove a way for them, where all were obedient, but the numbers lumped and clogged. When finally they

reached the stage, they spied at Nesta's box, during the thunder of the rounds of applause, after shaking hands

with Mr. Dubbleson, Sir Abraham Quatley, Dudley Sowerby, and others; and with Beaves Urmsinga

politician "never of the opposite party to a deuce of a funny fellow!go anywhere to hear him," he vowed.

"Miss Radnor and Mademoiselle de Seilles arrived quite safely," said Dudley, feasting on the box which

Nesta was wondering at Dartrey's absence. Not before Mr. Dubbleson, the chairman, the `gentleman of local

influence,' had animated the drowsed wits and respiratory organs of a packed audience by yielding place to

Simeon, did Dartrey appear. Simeon's name was shouted, in proof of the happy explosion of his first

anecdote, as Dartrey took seat behind Nesta. "Half an hour with the dear mother," he said.

Nesta's eyes thanked him. She pressed the hand of a demure young woman sitting close behind Louise de

Matilda bowed gravely, enfolding her affirmative in an outline of the no need for it, with perfect good

breeding. Dartrey was moved to think Skepsey's choice of a woman to worship did him honour. He glanced

at Louise. Her manner toward Matilda Pridden showed her sisterly with Nesta. He said: "I left Mr. Peridon

playing.A little anxiety to hear that the great speech of the evening is done; it's nothing else. I'll run to her

"Oh, good of you! And kind of Mr. Peridon!" She turned to Louise, who smiled at the simple art of the

Victor below, on the stage platform, indicated the waving of a hand to them and his delight at Simeon's

ringing points: which were, to Dartrey's mind, vacuously clever and crafty. Dartrey despised effects of

oratory, save when soldiers had to be hurled on a markor citizens nerved to stand for their country. Nesta

dived into her father's brilliancy of appreciation, a trifle pained by Dartrey's aristocratic air when he surveyed

the herd of heads agape and another cheer rang round. He smiled with her, to be with her, at a hit here and

there; he would not pretend an approval of this manner of winning electors to consider the country's interests

and their own. One fellow in the crowded pit, affecting a familiarity with Simeon, that permitted the taking of

liberties with the orator's Christian name, mildly amused him. He had no objection to hear "Simmy" shouted,

as Louise de Seilles observed. She was of his mind, in regard to the rough machinery of Freedom.

"We shall soon he serious, Miss Nesta," he said, after a look at Matilda Pridden.

"And another word about security that your candidate will keep his promises," continued Simeon: "You have

his word, my friends!" And he told the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned

the usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo hand on a cataract of Kronosbeard

across his breast, and pulled forth three white hairs, and presented them: "And as honourably to the usurious

Emerging from hearty clamours, the illustrative orator fell upon the question of political specifics:Mr.

Victor Radnor trusted to English good sense too profoundly to be offering them positive cures, as they would

hear the enemy say he did. Yet a bit of a cure may be offered, if we're not for pushing it too far, in pursuit of

the science of specifics, in the style of the foreign physician, probably Spanish, who had no practice, and

wished for leisure to let him prosecute his anatomical and other investigations to discover his grand medical

nostrum. So to get him fees meanwhile he advertised a cure for dyspepsia the resource of starving doctors.

And sure enough his patient came, showing the grand fat fellow we may be when we carry more of the

deciduously mortal than of the scraggy vital upon our persons. Anyone at a glance would have prescribed

water cresses to him: watercresses exclusively to eat for a fortnight. And that the good physician did.

Away went his patient, returning at the end of the fortnight, lean, and with the appetite of a Toledo blade for

succulent slices. He vowed he was the man. Our estimable doctor eyed him, tapped at him, pinched his tender

parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten nothing whatever but unadulterated

watercresses in the interval, seized on him in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into the

surgery, knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the felicity of exposing to view the very

healthiest patient ever seen under dissecting hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific for

him. All to further science!to which, in spite of the petitions of all the scientific bodies of the civilized

world, he fell a martyr on the scaffold, poor gentleman! But we know politics to be no such empirical

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy. He brought it home to Beaves Urmsing, whose laugh drove any

tone of apology out of it. Yet the orator was asked: "Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?"

He countered his questioner: "Just to liberate you from your moribund state, my friend." And he told the story

of the wrecked sailor, found lying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvation captain; and

how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit for interment; until presently a something of a voice

grew down into his ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to give her a last chance

in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her feathers, and shouting: "Polly tho drain dry!"which

struck on the nob of Jack's memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under Salvationism, and he

began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he

sat up, and cried: "That did it! Now to business!" for he was hungry. "And when I catch the ring of this

world's laugh from you, my friend! . . ." Simeon's application of the story was drowned.

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly: "You keep that tongue of yours from wagging,

Victor leaned forward. Simeon towered. He bellowed: "And you keep that tongue of yours from committing

It was like a lightningflash in the theatre. The man went under. Simeon flowed. Conscience reproached him

with the little he had done for Victor, and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed. To Matilda Pridden, his tales were

barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat rigid,

as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise when some one was perceived on the stage

bending to her father. It was Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not intelligible or

audible: but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering

hurried words to right and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not return.

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light. Besides she had the anticipation of a speech

from him, that would win Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell of the

hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his

flow. Matilda Pridden's gaze on him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set

herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of better leadership, she believed. Her

father had been telling her of late of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence translated

his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be once more the Islanders heading the world of a

new epoch abjuring materialism:some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to this earnest

young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father's absence and the continued shouts of laughter, the

insatiable thirst for fun, darkened her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed. They

had talked together; not much: enough for each to see at either's breast the wells from the founts of life.

The boxdoor opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stoodup to his look. He said to Matilda

She understood: "I am thinking of him." The words of her mother: `At peace when the night is over,' rang.

Along the gassy passages of the back of the theatre, the sound coming from an applausive audience was as

much a thunder as rage would have been. It was as void of human meaning as a sea.

IN the still dark hour of that April morning, the Rev. Septimus Barmby was roused by Mr. Peridon, with a

scribbled message from Victor, which he deciphered by candlelight held close to the sheet of paper, between

short inquiries and communications, losing more and more the sense of it as his intelligence became aware of

what dread blow had befallen the stricken man. He was bidden come to fulfil his promise instantly. He

remembered the bearing of the promise. Mr. Peridon's hurried explanatory narrative made the request terrific,

out of tragically lamentable. A semblance of obedience had to be put on, and the act of dressing aided it. Mr.

The two gentlemen drove Westward, speaking little; they had the dry sob in the throat.

Mr. Barmby remained humbly silent. Affectionate deep regrets moved him to say: "A loss irreparable. We

have but one voice of sorrow. And how sudden! The dear lady had no suffering, I trust."

"She fell into the arms of Mr. Durance. She died in his arms. She was unconscious, he says. I left her

straining for breath. She said `Victor;' she tried to smile:I understood I was not to alarm him."

That radiant home of all hospitality seemed opening on from darker chambers to the deadly dark. The

immorality in the moral situation could not be forgotten by one who was professionally a moralist. But an

incorruptible beauty in the woman's character claimed to plead for her memory. Even the rigorous in defence

of righteous laws are softened by a sinner's death to hear excuses, and may own a relationship, haply perceive

the faint nimbus of the saint. Death among us proves us to be still not so far from the Nature saying at every

Mr. Durance had prophesied a wailful end ever to the carol of Optimists! Yet it is not the black view which is

the right view. There is one between: the path adopted by Septimus Barmby:if he could but induce his

brethren to enter on it! The dreadful teaching of circumstances might help to the persuading of a fair young

woman, under his direction . . . having her hand disengaged.Mr. Barmby startled himself in the dream of

his uninterred passion for the. maiden: he chased it, seized it, hurled it hence, as a present

sacrilege:constantly, and at the pitch of our highest devotion to serve, are we assailed by the tempter! Is it,

that the love of woman is our weakness? For if so, then would a celibate clergy have grant of immunity. But,

alas, it is not so with them! We have to deplore the bearing of reports too credible. Again we are pushed to

contemplate woman as the mysterious obstruction to the perfect purity of soul. Nor is there a refuge in

asceticism. No more devilish nourisher of pride do we find than in pain voluntarily embraced. And strangely,

at the time when our hearts are pledged to thoughts upon others, they are led by woman to glance revolving

Light now, as of a strong memory of day along the street, assisted him to forget himself at the sight of the

inanimate houses of this London, all revealed in a quietness not less immobile than tombstones of an

unending cemetery, with its last ghost laid. Did men but know it!The habitual necessity to amass matter

for the weekly sermon, set him noting his meditative exclamations, the noble army of platitudes under haloes,

of good use to men: justifiably turned over in his mind for their good. He had to think, that this act of the

justifying of the act reproached him with a lack of due emotion, in sympathy with agonized friends truly dear.

Drawing near the hospitable house, his official and a cordial emotion united, as we see sorrowful

crapewreathed countenances. His heart struck heavily when the house was visible.

Could it be the very house? The look of it belied the tale inside. But that threw a ghostliness on the look.

Some one was pacing up and down. They greeted Dudley Sowerby. His ability to speak was tasked. They

gathered, that mademoiselle and "a Miss Pridden" were sitting with Nesta, and that their service in a crisis

had been precious. At such times, one of them reflected, woman has indeed her place: when life's battle

waxes red. Her soul must be capable of mounting to the level of the man's, then! It is a lesson!

Dudley said he was waiting for Dr. Themison to come forth. He could not tear himself from sight of the

The door opened to Dr. Themison departing, Colney Durance and Simeon Fenellan bareheaded. Colney

Dr. Themison gave his final counsels. "Her father must not see her. For him, it may have to be a specialist.

We will hope the best. Mr. Dartrey Fenellan stays beside him:good. As to the ceremony he calls for, a

form of it might soothe:any soothing possible! No music. I will return in a few hours."

Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message he had receivedthe

ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither of them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave

A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran down to him.

Mr. Barmby's tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing him to mollify a madman? But

"Now!" Colney's shoulders expressed the comment. "Well, now, Mr. Barmby, you can do the part desired.

Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was moderated, though not more than

moderated, when he was informed of the death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to

Jarniman's report, fortyfive minutes after Skepsey had a second time called for information of it at the house

in Regent's Park: five hours and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly. He was

urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation and correct it in the minutes.

Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the windows of the house either to

deepen awe or relieve. They were blank as eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common

cloak; but Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed a stricken man, who has

become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he

saw Skepsey drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor's lawyer. Could it be, that there was no Will

written? Could a Will be executed now? The moral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr.

Victor Radnor successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the elect of Fortune, felled to

the ground within an hour, he and all his house! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would

have seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the rational and the monstrous, he had

been heard to rave like the utterly distraught. Recollection of some of the things he shouted, was an

anguish:A notion came into the poor man, that he was the dead one of the two, and he cried out:

"Cremation? No, Colney's right, it robs us of our last laugh. I lie as I fall." He "had a confession for his

Nataly, for her only, for no one else." He had "an Idea." His begging of Dudley to listen without any punctilio

(putting a vulgar oath before it), was the sole piece of unreasonableness in the explanation of the idea: and

that was not much wilder than the stuff Dudley had read from reports of Radical speeches. He told Dudley he

thought him too young to be "best man to a widower about to be married," and that Barmby was "coming all

Dudley knew but the half, and he did not envy Dartrey Fenellan his task of watching over the wreck of a

splendid intelligence, humouring and restraining. According to the rumours, Mr. Radnor had not shown the

symptoms before the appearance of his daughter. For a while he hung, and then fell, like an icicle. Nesta

came with a cry for her father. He rose; Dartrey was by. Hugged fast in iron muscles, the unhappy creature

Nataly's dead body was her advocate with her family, with friends, with the world. Victor had more need of a

covering shroud to keep calamity respected. Earth makes all sweet: and we, when the privilege is granted us,

do well to treat the terribly stricken as if they had entered to the bosom of earth.

That night's infinite sadness was concentrated upon Nesta. She had need of her strength of mind and body.

The night went past as a year. The year followed it as a refreshing night. Slowly lifting her from our abysses,

it was a good angel to the girl. Permission could not be given for her to see her father. She had a home in the

modest home of Louise de Seilles on the borders of Dauphin�; and with French hearts at their best in

winningness around her, she learned again, as an art, the natural act of breathing calmly; she had by degrees a

longing for the snowheights. When her imagination could perch on them with love and pride, she began to

recover the throb for a part in human action. It set her nature flowing to the mate she had chosen, who was

her counsellor, her supporter, and her sword. She had awakened to new life, not to sink back upon a breast of

love, though thoughts of the lover were as blows upon strung musical chords at her bosom. Her union with

Dartrey was for the having an ally and the being an ally, in resolute vision of strife ahead, through the veiled

dreams that bear the blush. This was behind a maidenly demureness. Are not young women hypocrites? Who

shall fathom their guile! A girl with a pretty smile, a gentle manner, a liking for wild flowers up on the rocks;

and graceful with resemblances to the swelling proportions of gardenfruits approved in young women by

the connoisseur eye of man; distinctly designed to embrace the state of marriage, that she might (a girl of

singularly lucid and receptive eyes) the better give battle to men touching matters which they howl at an

eccentric matron for naming. So it was. And the yielding of her hand to Dartrey, would have appeared at that

period of her revival, as among the baser compliances of the fleshly, if she had not seen in him, whom she

owned for leader, her fellow soldier, warrior friend, hero, of her own heart's mould, but a greater.

She was on Como, at the villa of the Signora Giulia Sanfredini, when Dudley's letter reached her, with the

supplicating offer of the share of his earldom. An English home meanwhile was proposed to her at the house

of his mother the Countess. He knew that he did not write to a brilliant heiress. The generosity she had

always felt that he possessed, he thus proved in figures. They are convincing and not melting. But she was

moved to tears by his goodness in visiting her father, as well as by the hopeful news he sent. He wrote

delicately, withholding the title of her father's place of abode. There were expectations of her father's perfect

recovery; the signs were auspicious; he appeared to be restored to the `likeness to himself' in the instances

Dudley furnished:his appointment with him for the fluteduet next day; and particularly his enthusiastic

satisfaction with the largeness and easy excellent service of the residence "in which he so happily found

himself established." He held it to be, "on the whole, superior to Lakelands." The smile and the tear rolled

together in Nesta reading these words. And her father spoke repeatedly of longing to embrace his Fredi, of

the joy her last letter had given him, of his intention to send an immediate answer: and he showed, Dudley a

pile of manuscript ready for the post. He talked of public affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or

eccentricity in the views he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little Skepsey. He said he really did

Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforce ungentle, in the signature of the name of

Nesta Victoria Fenellan:a name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and plead for as

he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelled esteem, and regrets.

The day following the report of her father's wish to see her, she and her husband started for England. On that

day, Victor breathed his last. Dudley had seen not the hopeful but an ominous illumination of the stricken

man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often did Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating

form of the beloved mother with her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of the wearing of

the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge of things and her ruthless penetrativeness made

it sometimes hard for her to be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil stamped blotches on

its face and shrieked in stains across the skin beneath its gallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as

the world condemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return for corrections of his demon

temper, to trim an ardent young woman's fanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too,

for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp of History exhibiting man's original sprouts to

growth and fitful continuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is in pleasure, for those who have

passed a season, was when the old Concertset assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of a

living woman, that she had saved her from going under the world's waggonwheels, and taught her to know

what is actually meant by the good living of a shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness richer

than her recollection of the bride's, though never was bride in fuller flower to her lord than she who brought

the dower of an equal valiancy to Dartrey Fenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many, why a

courageous young woman requires of high heaven, far more than the commendably timid, a doughty

husband. She had him; otherwise would that puzzled old world, which beheld her step out of the ranks to

challenge it, and could not blast her personal reputation, have commissioned a paw to maul her character,

perhaps instructing the gossips to murmur of her parentage. Nesta Victoria Fenellan had the husband who

Daniel Skepsey rejoices in service to his new master, owing to the scientific opinion he can at any moment of

the day apply for, as to the military defences of the country; instead of our attempting to arrest the enemy by

vociferations of persistent prayer:the sole point of difference between him and his Matilda; and it might

have been fatal but that Nesta's intervention was persuasive. The two members of the Army first in the field

to enrol and give rank according to the merits of either, to both sexes, were made one. Colney Durance

(practically cynical when not fancifully, men said) stood by Skepsey at the altar. His published exercises in

Satire produce a flush of the article in the Reviews of his books. Meat and wine in turn fence the Hymen

beckoning Priscilla and Mr. Pempton. The forms of Religion more than the Channel's division of races keep

Louise de Seilles and Mr. Peridon asunder: and in the uniting of them Colney is interested, because it would

have so pleased the woman of the loyal heart no longer beating. He let Victor's end be his expiation and did

not phrase blame of him. He considered the shallowness of the abstract Optimist exposed enough in Victor's

history. He was reconciled to it when, looking on their child, he discerned, that for a cancelling of the errors