lover of nature through many a generation; and to be forgiven by sad frail souls who could accuse him of pipeing devil’s agent to them at the perilous instant—­poor 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 ’perhaps’—­and she hummed; she was off on the fraternity in wickedness.

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 you on the pier!  Your mother objects?’

‘She has inquired, nothing more.’

’I am not twenty-three:  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 we—­as 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.’

’We have been taught differently.  I do not use those words.  Nothing else.’

‘They frighten you.’

‘They make me shut; that is all.’

’Supposing you were some day to discover . . . ta-tata, all the things there are in the world.’  Mrs. Marsett let fly an artificial chirrup.  ‘You must have some ideas of me.’

‘I think you have had unhappy experiences.’

’Nesta . . . just now and then! the first time we rode out together, coming back from the downs, I remember, I spoke, without thinking—­I was enraged—­of 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:  until—­you did —­you set my heart going.  You spoke of the poor women like an angel of compassion.  You said, we were all mixed up with their fate—­I