guess what she holds on, to keep her breath.  All the happiness in life!—­if only it could benefit her.  But it ’s the cause of death to us.  Do you see, dear friend;—­you are a friend, proved friend,’ he took her hand, and held and pressed it, in great need of a sanguine response to emphasis; and having this warm feminine hand, his ideas ran off with it.  ’The friend I need!  You have courage.  My Nataly, poor dear—­she can endure, in her quiet way.  A woman of courage would take her place beside me and compel the world to do her homage, help;—­a bright ready smile does it!  She would never be beaten.  Of course, we could have lived under a bushel—­stifled next to death!  But I am for light, air-battle, if you like.  I want a comrade, not a—­not that I complain.  I respect, pity, love—­I do love her, honour:  only, we want something else—­courage—­to face the enemy.  Quite right, that she should speak to Dudley Sowerby.  He has to know, must know; all who deal closely with us must know.  But see a moment:  I am waiting to see the impediment dispersed, which puts her at an inequality with the world:  and then I speak to all whom it concerns—­not before:  for her sake.  How is it now?  Dudley will ask . . . you understand.  And when I am forced to confess, that the mother, the mother of the girl he seeks in marriage, is not yet in that state herself, probably at that very instant the obstacle has crumbled to dust!  I say, probably:  I have information—­doctors, friends, attendants—­they all declare it cannot last outside a week.  But you are here—­true, I could swear! a touch of a hand tells me.  A woman’s hand?  Well, yes:  I read by the touch of a woman’s hand:—­betrays more than her looks or her lips!’ He sank his voice.  ’I don’t talk of condoling:  if you are in grief, you know I share it.’  He kissed her hand, and laid it on her lap; eyed it, and met her eyes; took a header into her eyes, and lost himself.  A nip of his conscience moved his tongue to say:  ‘As for guilt, if it were known . . . a couple of ascetics—­absolutely!’ But this was assumed to be unintelligible; and it was merely the apology to his conscience in communion with the sprite of a petticoated fair one who was being subjected to tender little liberties, necessarily addressed in enigmas.  He righted immediately, under a perception of the thoroughbred’s contempt for the barriers of wattled sheep; and caught the word ‘guilt,’ to hide the Philistine citizen’s lapse, by relating historically, in abridgement, the honest beauty of the passionate loves of the two whom the world proscribed for honestly loving.  There was no guilt.  He harped on the word, to erase the recollection of his first use of it.

‘Fiddle,’ said Lady Grace.  ’The thing happened.  You have now to carry it through.  You require a woman’s aid in a social matter.  Rely on me, for what I can do.  You will see Dudley on Tuesday?  I will write.  Be plain with him; not forgetting the gilding, I need not remark.  Your Nesta has no aversion?’