He said:  ‘I have,’ and had much to say besides, but deferred:  a blow was visible.  The father had been more encouraging to him than the mother.

’You have not known of any circumstance that might cause hesitation in asking?’

‘Miss Radnor?’

‘My daughter:—­you have to think of your family.’

’Indeed, Mrs. Radnor, I was coming to London tomorrow, with the consent of my family.’

‘You address me as Mrs. Radnor.  I have not the legal right to the name.’

‘Not legal!’ said he, with a catch at the word.

He spun round in her sight, though his demeanour was manfully rigid.

‘Have I understood, madam . . . ?’

’You would not request me to repeat it.  Is that your horse the man is leading?’

‘My horse:  it must be my horse.’

’Mount and ride back.  Leave me:  I shall not eat.  Reflect, by yourself.  You are in a position of one who is not allowed to decide by his feelings.  Mr. Radnor you know where to find.’

‘But surely, some food?  I cannot have misapprehended?’

‘I cannot eat.  I think you have understood me clearly.’

‘You wish me to go?’

‘I beg.’

‘It pains me, dear madam.’

‘It relieves me, if you will.  Here is your horse.’

She gave her hand.  He touched it and bent.  He looked at her.  A surge of impossible questions rolled to his mouth and rolled back, with the thought of an incredible thing, that her manner, more than her words, held him from doubting.

‘I obey you,’ he said.

‘You are kind.’

He mounted horse, raised hat, paced on, and again bowing, to one of the wayside trees, cantered.  The man was gone; but not from Nataly’s vision that face of wet chalk under one of the shades of fire.

CHAPTER XXVI

In which we see A conventional gentleman endeavouring to examine A
spectre of himself

Dudley rode back to Cronidge with his thunderstroke.  It filled him, as in those halls of political clamour, where explanatory speech is not accepted, because of a drowning tide of hot blood on both sides.  He sought to win attention by submitting a resolution, to the effect, that he would the next morning enter into the presence of Mr. Victor Radnor, bearing his family’s feelings, for a discussion upon them.  But the brutish tumult, in addition to surcharging, encased him:  he could not rightly conceive the nature of feelings:  men were driving shoals; he had lost hearing and touch of individual men; had become a house of angrily opposing parties.

He was hurt, he knew; and therefore he supposed himself injured, though there were contrary outcries, and he admitted that he stood free; he had not been inextricably deceived.