Her mother’s habitual serenity in martyrdom was deceiving.  Nesta had a transient suspicion, that she had grown, from use, to like the whirl of company, for oblivion in the excitement; and as her remembrance of her own station among the crowding people was a hot flush, the difference of their feelings chilled her.

Nataly said:  ‘It is to-morrow night again; we do not rest.’  She smiled; and at once the girl read woman’s armour on the dear face, and asked herself, Could I be so brave?  The question following was a speechless wave, that surged at her father.  She tried to fathom the scheme he entertained.  The attempt obscured her conception of the man he was.  She could not grasp him, being too young for knowing, that young heads cannot obtain a critical hold upon one whom they see grandly succeeding it is the sun’s brilliance to their eyes.

Mother and daughter slept together that night, and their embrace was their world.

Nesta delighted her father the next day by walking beside him into the, City, as far as the end of the Embankment, where the carriage was in waiting with her maid to bring her back; and at his mere ejaculation of a wish, the hardy girl drove down in the afternoon for the walk home with him.  Lady Grace Halley was at the office.  ’I’m an incorrigible Stock Exchange gambler,’ she said.

‘Only,’ Victor bade her beware, ’Mines are undulating in movement, and their heights are a preparation for their going down.’

She said she ‘liked a swing.’

Nesta looked at them in turn.

The day after and the day after, Lady Grace was present.  She made play with Dudley’s name.

This coming into the City daily of a girl, for the sake of walking back in winter weather with her father, struck her as ambiguous:  either a jealous foolish mother’s device, or that of a weak man beating about for protection.  But the woman of the positive world soon read to the contrary; helped a little by the man, no doubt.  She read rather too much to the contrary, and took the pedestrian girl for perfect simplicity in her tastes, when Nesta had so far grown watchful as to feel relieved by the lady’s departure.  Her mother, without sympathy for the lady, was too great of soul for jealousy.  Victor had his Nataly before him at a hint from Lady Grace:  and he went somewhat further than the exact degree when affirming, that Nataly could not scheme, and was incapable of suspecting.—­Nataly could perceive things with a certain accuracy:  she would not stoop to a meanness.  ‘Plot?  Nataly?’ said he, and shrugged.  In fact, the void of plot, drama, shuffle of excitement, reflected upon Nataly.  He might have seen as tragic as ever dripped on Stage, had he looked.