Moved by reflective compassion, Mr. Barmby resumed the wooer’s note, some few steps after he had responded to the salutation of Dartrey Fenellan and Colonel Sudley.  She did not speak.  She turned her forehead to him; and the absence of the world from her eyes chilled his tongue.

He declined the pleasure of the lunch with the Duvidney ladies.  He desired to be alone, to question himself fasting, to sound the deed he had done; for he had struck on a suspicion of selfishness in it:  and though Love must needs be an egoism, Love is no warrant for the doing of a hurt to the creature beloved.  Thoughts upon Skepsey and the tale of his Matilda Pridden’s labours in poor neighbourhoods, to which he had been inattentive during the journey down to the sea, invaded him; they were persistent.  He was a worthy man, having within him the spiritual impulse curiously ready to take the place where a material disappointment left vacancy.  The vulgar sort embrace the devil at that stage.  Before the day had sunk, Mr. Barmby’s lowest wish was, to be a light, as the instrument of his Church in her ministrations amid the haunts of sin and slime, to such plain souls as Daniel Skepsey and Matilda Pridden.  And he could still be that, if Nesta, in the chapters of the future, changed her mind.  She might; for her good she would; he reserved the hope.  His light was one to burn beneath an extinguisher.

At the luncheon table of the Duvidney ladies, it was a pain to Dorothea and Virginia to witness how poor the appetite their Nesta brought in from the briny blowy walk.  They prophesied against her chances of a good sleep at night, if she did not eat heartily.  Virginia timidly remarked on her paleness.  Both of them put their simple arts in motion to let her know, that she was dear to them:  so dear as to make them dread the hour of parting.  They named their dread of it.  They had consulted in private and owned to one another, that they did really love the child, and dared not look forward to what they would do without her.  The dear child’s paleness and want of appetite (they remembered they were observing a weak innocent girl) suggested to them mutually the idea of a young female heart sickening, for the old unhappy maiden reason.  But, if only she might return with them to the Wells, the Rev. Stuart Rem would assure her to convince her of her not being quite, quite forsaken.  He, or some one having sanction from Victor, might ultimately (the ladies waiting anxiously in the next room, to fold her on the warmth of their bosoms when she had heard) impart to her the knowledge of circumstances, which would, under their further tuition concerning the particular sentiments of great families and the strict duties of the scions of the race, help to account for and excuse the Hon. Dudley Sowerby’s behaviour.

They went up to the drawing-room, talking of Skepsey and his tale of Miss Pridden, for Nesta’s amusement.  Any talk of her Skepsey usually quickened her lips to reminiscent smiles and speech.  Now she held on to gazeing; and sadly, it seemed; as if some object were not present.