Another interview ensued between Nesta and her suitor.  Dudley bore no resemblance to Mr. Barmby, who refused to take the word no from her, and had taken it, and had gone to do holy work, for which she revered him.  Dudley took the word, leaving her to imagine freedom, until once more her mother or her father, inspired by him, came interceding, her mother actually supplicating.  So that the reality of Dudley’s love rose to conception like a London dawn over Nesta; and how, honourably, decently, positively, to sever herself from it, grew to be an ill-visaged problem.  She glanced in soul at Dartrey Fenellan for help; she had her wild thoughts.  Having once called him Dartrey, the virginal barrier to thoughts was broken; and but for love of her father, for love and pity of her mother, she would have ventured the step to make the man who had her whole being in charge accept or reject her.  Nothing else appeared in prospect.  Her father and mother were urgently one to favour Dudley; and the sensitive gentleman presented himself to receive his wound and to depart with it.  But always he returned.  At last, as if under tuition, he refrained from provoking a wound; he stood there to win her upon any terms; and he was a handsome figure, acknowledged by the damsel to be increasing in good looks as more and more his pretensions became distasteful to her.  The slight cast of sourness on his lower features had almost vanished, his nature seemed to have enlarged.  He complimented her for her ‘generous benevolence,’ vaguely, yet with evident sincereness; he admitted, that the modern world is ’attempting difficulties with at least commendable intentions’; and that the position of women demands improvement, consideration for them also.  He said feelingly:  ‘They have to bear extraordinary burdens!’ There he stopped.

The sharp intelligence fronting him understood, that this compassionate ejaculation was the point where she, too, must cry halt.  He had, however—­still under tuition, perhaps—­withdrawn his voice from the pursuit of her; and so she in gratitude silenced her critical mind beneath a smooth conceit of her having led him two steps to a broader tolerance.  Susceptible as she was, she did not influence him without being affected herself in other things than her vanity:  his prudishness affected her.  Only when her heart flamed did she disdain that real haven of refuge, with its visionary mount of superiority, offered by Society to its effect, in the habit of ignoring the sins it fosters under cloak;—­ not less than did the naked barbaric time, and far more to the vitiation of the soul.  He fancied he was moulding her; therefore winning her.  It followed, that he had the lover’s desire for assurance of exclusive possession; and reflecting, that he had greatly pardoned, he grew exacting.  He mentioned his objections to some of Mr. Dartrey Fenellan’s ideas.

Nesta replied:  ‘I have this morning had two letters to make me happy.’