Nataly read a leaf of her fate in this announcement.  Nay, she beheld herself as the outer world wexedly 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 his 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 manner of man she was matched with; and it was not a poor excuse.

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 kept from the dangerous count of two.

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. Barmby—­and decide who will whether it is that Love was made to elude or that curates impelled by his fires are subtle as nether—­had 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 mediaeval forest-palace 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 alarmed, instead of rich imagination colouring and fostering.

She had no memory for his words; so, and truly, she told her Louise:  meaning that she had only a spiceless memory; especially for the word love in her ears from the mouth of a man.