Luther . . . but we are not in Luther’s time:—­Nature . . . no, nor can there possibly be allusions to Nature.  Mr. Barmby wondered at Protestant parents taking a Papistical governess for their young flower of English womanhood.  However, she venerated St. Louis; he cordially also; there they met; and he admitted, that she had, for a Frenchwoman, a handsome face, and besides an agreeably artificial ingenuousness in the looks which could be so politely dubious as to appear only dubiously adverse.

The spell upon Nesta was not blown away on English ground; and when her father and mother were comparing their impressions, she could not but keep guard over the deeper among her own.  At the Chateau de Gisors, leftward off Vernon on Seine, it had been one of romance and wonderment, with inquisitive historic soundings of her knowledge and mademoiselle’s, a reverence for the prisoner’s patient holy work, and picturings of his watchful waiting daily, Nail in hand, for the heaven-sent sunlight on the circular dungeon-wall through the slits of the meurtrieres.  But the Mausoleum at Dreux spake religiously; it enfolded Mr. Barmby, his voice re-edified it.  The fact that he had discoursed there, though not a word of the discourse was remembered, allied him to the spirit of a day rather increasing in sacredness as it receded and left her less the possessor of it, more the worshipper.

Mademoiselle had to say to herself:  ‘Impossible!’ after seeing the drift of her dear Nesta’s eyes in the wake of the colossal English clergyman.  She fed her incredulousness indignantly on the evidence confounding it.  Nataly was aware of unusual intonations, treble-stressed, in the Bethesda and the Galilee of Mr. Barmby on Concert evenings:  as it were, the towering wood-work of the cathedral organ in quake under emission of its multitudinous outroar.  The ‘Which?’ of the Rev. Septimus, addressed to Nesta, when song was demanded of him; and her ‘Either’; and his gentle hesitation, upon a gaze at her for the directing choice, could not be unnoticed by women.

Did he know a certain thing?—­and dream of urging the suit, as an indulgent skipper of parental pages?

Such haunting interrogations were the conspirators’ daggers out at any instant, or leaping in sheath, against Nataly’s peace of mind.  But she trusted her girl’s laughing side to rectify any little sentimental overbalancing.  She left the ground where maternal meditations are serious, at an image of Mr. Barmby knocking at Nesta’s heart as a lover.  Was it worth inquiry?

A feminine look was trailed across the eyes of mademoiselle, with mention of Mr. Barmby’s name.

Mademoiselle rippled her shoulders.  ’We are at present much enamoured of Bethesda.’

That watchfullest showing no alarm, the absurdity of the suspicion smothered it.

Nataly had moreover to receive startling new guests: