‘Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?’

‘He makes it wherever he steps.’

’He would reproach me for not detaining you.  Tell Nesta I have to lie down after talking.  She has a child’s confidence in you.’

A man of middle age! he said to himself.  It is the particular ejaculation which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday.  He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give him.  Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her was an ennobling equal to celestial.  For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the world—­his dream to discover in woman’s form.  She, the little Nesta, the tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though she was, already in the fight with evil:  a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian.  The worse for it?  Sowerby would think so.  She was not of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments higher than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by Mrs. Marsett—­not incredulous of the girl’s heroism:  that capacity he caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:—­but her beauty, or the form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot of thought in our fens.  Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed to service along by those dismal swamps:  and saintly she looks; not of this earth.  Nesta was of the blooming earth.  Where do we meet girl or woman comparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch to lift the spotted of her sex?  He was puzzled by Nesta’s unlikeness in deeds and in aspect.  He remembered her eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld her; presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind.  His doubts cleared off.  Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character be attached to the man Sowerby?  That entirely passed belief.

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing?  Her tones were singularly vibrating.

They talked for a while before, drawing a deep breath, she said:  ’I fancy I am in disgrace with my mother.’

‘You have a suspicion why?’ said he.

‘I have.’

She would have told him why:  the words were at her lips.  Previous to her emotion on the journey home, the words would have come out.  They were arrested by the thunder of the knowledge, that the nobleness in him drawing her to be able to speak of scarlet matter, was personally worshipped.

He attributed the full rose upon her cheeks to the forbidding subject.

To spare pain, he said:  ’No misunderstanding with the dear mother will last the day through.  Can I help?’