She dropped away from ideas of remonstrance; faintly seeing, in her sigh of submission, that the deficiency affecting her character would have been supplied by a greater force of character, pressing either to speech or acts.  The confession of a fated inevitable in the mind, is weakness prostrate.  She knew it:  but she could point to the manner of man she was matched with; and it was not a poor excuse.

Mr. Barmby, she thought, deserved her gratitude in some degree for stepping between Mr. Sowerby and Nesta.  The girl not having inclinations, and the young gentleman being devoid of stratagem, they were easily kept from the dangerous count of two.

Mademoiselle would have said, that the shepherd also had rarely if ever a minute quite alone with her lamb.  Incredulously she perceived signs of a shock.  The secret following the signs was betrayed by Nesta in return for a tender grasp of hands and a droll flutter of eyelids.  Out it came, on a nod first; then a dreary mention of a date, and an incident, to bring it nearer to comprehension.  Mr. Barmby—­and decide who will whether it is that Love was made to elude or that curates impelled by his fires are subtle as nether—­had outwitted French watchfulness by stealing minutes enough on a day at Lakelands to declare himself.  And no wonder the girl looked so forlorn:  he had shivered her mediaeval forest-palace of illuminated glass, to leave her standing like a mountain hind, that sniffs the tainted gale off the crag of her first quick leap from hounds; her instincts alarmed, instead of rich imagination colouring and fostering.

She had no memory for his words; so, and truly, she told her Louise:  meaning that she had only a spiceless memory; especially for the word love in her ears from the mouth of a man.

There had been a dream of it; with the life-awakening marvel it would be, the humbleness it would bring to her soul beneath the golden clothing of her body:  one of those faint formless dreams, which are as the bend of grasses to the breath of a still twilight.  She lived too spiritedly to hang on any dream; and had moreover a muffled dread-shadow-sister to the virginal desire—­of this one, as of a fateful power that might drag her down, disorder, discolour.  But now she had heard it:  the word, the very word itself! in her own ears! addressed to her! in a man’s voice!  The first utterance had been heard, and it was over; the chapter of the book of bulky promise of the splendours and mysteries;—­the shimmering woods and bushy glades, and the descent of the shape celestial, and the recognition—­the mutual cry of affinity; and overhead the crimson outrolling of the flag of beneficent enterprises hand in hand, all was at an end.  These, then, are the deceptions our elders tell of!  That masculine voice should herald a new world to the maiden.  The voice she had heard did but rock to ruin the world she had been living in.

Mademoiselle prudently forbore from satirical remarks on his person or on his conduct.  Nesta had nothing to defend:  she walked in a bald waste.