‘And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!’ Victor exclaimed, to have mentionable grounds for pitying his girl.  ’I promised Fredi she should never count a year without Highlands or Alps.  You remember, mama?—­down in the West Highlands.  Fancy the dear bit of bundle, Dartrey!—­we had laid her in her bed; she was about seven or eight; and there she lay wide awake.  “What ’s Fredi thinking of?”—­ “I’m thinking of the tops of the mountains at night, dada.”—­She could climb them now; she has the legs.’

Nataly said:  ’You have some report to make.  You dined with those people?’

’The Marsetts:  yes:—­well-suited couple enough.  It’s to happen before Winter ends—­at once; before Christmas; positively before next Spring.  Fredi’s doing!  He has to manage, arrange.—­She’s a good-looking woman, good height, well-rounded; well-behaved, too:  she won’t make a bad Lady Marsett.  Every time that woman spoke of our girl, the tears jumped to her eyelids.’

‘Come to me before you go to bed,’ Nataly said, rising, her voice foundering; ‘Good-night, Dartrey.’

She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake hands with composure.  Not only was it a nauseous mixture she was forced to gulp from Victor, it burned like a poison.

‘Really Fredi’s doing—­chiefly,’ said Victor, as soon as Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room.  ’I played the man of pomp with Marsett—­good heavy kind of creature:  attached to the woman.  She’s the better horse, as far as brains go.  Good enough Lady Marsett.  I harped on Major Worrell:  my daughter insulted.  He knew of it—­spoke of you properly.  The man offered all apologies; he has told the Major he is no gentleman, not a fit associate for gentlemen:—­quite so—­and has cut him dead.  Will marry her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can of the honour of my daughter’s acquaintance.  Rather comical grimace, when he vowed he’d fasten the tie.  He doesn’t like marriage.  But, he can’t give her up.  And she’s for patronizing the institution.  But she is ready to say good-bye to him “rather than see the truest lady in the world insulted”—­her words.  And so he swallows his dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish.  Antecedents, I suppose:  has to stomach them.  But if a man’s fond of a woman—­if he knows he saves her from slipping lower—­and it’s an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its wheels:—­I say, a woman who has a man to lean on, unless she’s as downright corrupt as two or three of the men we’ve known:—­upon my word, Dartrey, I come round to some of your ideas on these matters.  It’s this girl of mine, this wee bit of girl in her little nightshirt with the frill, astonishes me most:—­“thinking of the tops of the mountains at night!” She has positively done the whole of this work-main part.  I smiled when I left the house, to have to own our little Fredi starting us all on the road.  It