He pitied, and strove to be sensible of her.  The effort succeeded so well, that he was presently striving to be insensible.  The former state, was the mounting of a wall; the latter, was a sinking through a chasm.  There would be family consultations, abhorrent; his father’s agonized amazement at the problem presented to a family of scrupulous principles and pecuniary requirements; his mother’s blunt mention of the abominable name—­mediaevally vindicated in champions of certain princely families indeed, but morally condemned; always under condemnation of the Church:  a blot:  and handed down:  Posterity, and it might be a titled posterity, crying out.  A man in the situation of Dudley could not think solely of himself.  The nobles of the land are bound in honour to their posterity.  There you have one of the prominent permanent distinctions between them and the commonalty.

His mother would again propose her chosen bride for him:  Edith Averst, with the dowry of a present one thousand pounds per annum, and prospect of six or so, excluding Sir John’s estate, Carping, in Leicestershire; a fair estate, likely to fall to Edith; consumption seized her brothers as they ripened.  A fair girl too; only Dudley did not love her; he wanted to love.  He was learning the trick from this other one, who had become obscured and diminished, tainted, to the thought of her; yet not extinct.  Sight of her was to be dreaded.

Unguiltily tainted, in herself she was innocent.  That constituted the unhappy invitation to him to swallow one half of his feelings, which had his world’s blessing on it, for the beneficial enlargement and enthronement of the baser unblest half, which he hugged and distrusted.  Can innocence issue of the guilty?  He asked it, hopeing it might be possible:  he had been educated in his family to believe, that the laws governing human institutions are divine—­until History has altered them.  They are altered, to present a fresh bulwark against the infidel.  His conservative mind, retiring in good order, occupied the next rearward post of resistance.  Secretly behind it, the man was proud of having a heart to beat for the cause of the besiegeing enemy, in the present instance.  When this was blabbed to him, and he had owned it, he attributed his weakness to excess of nature, the liking for a fair face.—­Oh, but more! spirit was in the sweet eyes.  She led him—­she did lead him in spiritual things; led him out of common circles of thought, into refreshing new spheres; he had reminiscences of his having relished the juices of the not quite obviously comic, through her indications:  and really, in spite of her inferior flimsy girl’s education, she could boast her acquirements; she was quick, startlingly; modest, too, in commerce with a slower mind that carried more; though she laughed and was a needle for humour:  she taught him at times to put away his contempt of the romantic; she had actually shown him, that his expressed contempt of it disguised a dread:  as it did, and he was conscious of the foolishness of it now while pursuing her image, while his intelligence and senses gave her the form and glory of young morning.