‘Brighton?  What a life for a man like Dartrey, at Brighton!’

Her breast heaved.  ’If I cannot see my Nesta there, he will bring her up to me for a day: 

’But, my dear, I will bring her up to you, if it is your wish to see her.’

‘It is becoming imperative that I should.’

’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 inquisitive.

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, willingly spared a tender-hearted husband—­so good a master.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MRS. MARSETT

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 cricket-field:  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 Japan.