They were the one pulse of the married Grundy beating in his hand.  So it had been.

He rattled his views upon Indian business, to hold Inchling silent, and let his mind dwell almost lovingly on the good faithful spouse, who had no phosphorescent writing of a recent throbbing event on the four walls of his room.

Nataly was not so generously encountered in idea.

He felt and regretted this.  He greeted her with a doubled affectionateness.  Her pitiable deficiency of courage, excusing a man for this and that small matter in the thick of the conflict, made demands on him for gentle treatment.

‘You have not seen any one?’ she asked.

‘City people.  And you, my love?’

’Mr. Barmby called.  He has gone down to Tunbridge Wells for a week, to some friend there.’  She added, in pain of thought:  ’I have seen Dartrey.  He has brought Lord Clanconan to town, for a consultation, and expects he will have to take him to Brighton.’

‘Brighton?  What a life for a man like Dartrey, at Brighton!’

Her breast heaved.  ’If I cannot see my Nesta there, he will bring her up to me for a day: 

’But, my dear, I will bring her up to you, if it is your wish to see her.’

‘It is becoming imperative that I should.’

’No hurry, no hurry:  wait till the end of next week.  And I must see Dartrey, on business, at once!’

She gave the address in a neighbouring square.  He had minutes to spare before dinner, and flew.  She was not inquisitive.

Colney Durance had told Dartrey that Victor was killing her.  She had little animation; her smiles were ready, but faint.  After her interview with Dudley, there had been a swoon at home; and her maid, sworn to secrecy, willingly spared a tender-hearted husband—­so good a master.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MRS. MARSETT

Little acts of kindness were not beyond the range of Colney Durance, and he ran down to Brighton, to give the exiled Nesta some taste of her friendly London circle.  The Duvidney ladies knew that the dreaded gentleman had a regard for the girl.  Their own, which was becoming warmer than they liked to think, was impressed by his manner of conversing with her.  ‘Child though she was,’ he paid her the compliment of a sober as well as a satirical review of the day’s political matter and recent publications; and the ladies were introduced, in a wonderment, to the damsel Delphica.  They listened placidly to a discourse upon her performances, Japanese to their understandings.