heart.  He is a respecter of women—­of all women; not only the fortunate.  He is the friend of the weaker everywhere.  He has been proved in fire.  He does not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who scorns people for doing:—­and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly.  He is not one of the unwise advocates.  He measures the forces against them.  He reads their breasts.  He likes me.  He is with me in my plans.  He has not said, has not shown, he loves me.  It is too high a thought for me until I hear it.’

‘Has your soul!’ was all that Victor could reply, while the whole conception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling structure.

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank in dumbness.  Her seeming intuition—­if it was not a perception—­of the point where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened his character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious fear of his girl:  and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel.  He tried to think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world.  An effort to imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit through her eyes:  in her deeds too:  she had already done work on the road:—­Colney Durance, Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, strongly backing her, upholding her.  Victor could no longer so naturally name her Fredi.

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when he ventured.  When Dudley, calling on him in the City to discuss the candidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he might regain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victor as audacious.  It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of the earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch.  He appeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; he offered himself; he made but one stipulation.  Victor regretfully assured him, he feared he could do nothing.  The thought of his entry into Lakelands, with Nesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of the place, grew dim.

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business as the braced swimmer on seas, which instantly he became, with an end in view to be gained.

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta to be waiting for him, he reached home, and found Nataly in her sitting-room alone.  ‘Nesta was tired,’ she said:  ’we have had a scene; she refuses Mr. Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, painfully; she blames him for disturbing me; she will not see the right course:—­a mother reads her daughter!  If my girl has not guidance!—­ she means rightly, she is rash.’

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her think with regard to Victor’s daughter—­daughter also of the woman whom her hard conscience accused of inflammability.  ’Here is a note from Dr. Themison, dear.’