rank to espouse the daughter of a couple socially insurgent-stained, 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 adventurer-lords 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 of it.  And it darkened her reading of Victor’s character.

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.

‘The day was pleasant to all, except perhaps poor mademoiselle,’ she said.

‘Peridon should have come?’

‘Present or absent, his chances are not brilliant, I fear.’

‘And Pempton and Priscy!’

‘They are growing cooler!’

‘With their grotesque objections to one another’s habits at table!’

‘Can we ever hope to get them over it?’

‘When Priscy drinks Port and Pempton munches beef, Colney says.’

’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 Concert-pathos in her voice:—­couldn’t act a bit!  And Pempton’s ’cello tones now and then have gone through me—­simply from his fiddle-bow, I believe.  Don’t talk to me of feeling in a couple, within reach of one another and sniffing objections.—­Good, then, for a successful day to-day so far?’

He neared her, wooing her; and she assented, with a franker smile than she had worn through the day.

The common burden on their hearts—­the simple discussion to come of the task of communicating dire actualities to their innocent Nesta—­was laid aside.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds
Aristocratic assumption of licence
But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course)
Consent of circumstances
Continued trust in the man—­is the alternative of despair
Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear
Despises hostile elements and goes unpunished
Dithyrambic inebriety of narration
Feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted
Fire smoothes the creases
Frankness as an armour over wariness
Half a dozen dozen left
Hard to bear, at times unbearable
Haremed opinion of the unfitness of women
He neared her, wooing her; and she assented