‘Have you an idea, in reading Nesta’s letter?’

’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 has to expect from Colney.’

’At any rate, Mr. Durance hurts no one.  You will, in your letter, appoint the day of the interview?’

’Hurts himself!  Yes, dearest; appoint for—­ten days homeward—­eleventh day from to-day.  And you to Fredi:  a bit of description—­as 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 she could plead still, for herself she could not.

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 they were not so fearful to her as the gloom they displaced.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Belief in the narrative by promoting nausea in the audience
Claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges
Consent to take life as it is
Dialogue between Nature and Circumstance
Dudley was not gifted to read behind words and looks
Exuberant anticipatory trustfulness
Fell to chatting upon the nothings agreeably and seriously
Greater our successes, the greater the slaves we become
He never explained
How Success derides Ambition! 
If only been intellectually a little flexible in his morality
Naturally as deceived as he wished to be
Official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one
Optional marriages, broken or renewed every seven years
Pessimy is invulnerable
Repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration
Satirist is an executioner by profession
Semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord
The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke
The homage we pay him flatters us
We must have some excuse, if we would keep to life