Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see black balls raining, the narrow way between ducal mansions offers prospect of the sweep of greensward, all but touching up to the sunset to draw it to the dance.

Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining way to an alliance with one of these great surrounding houses; and he had a passion for the acquisition of money as a means.  And it has to be confessed, he had sacrificed in youth a slice of his youth, to gain it without labour—­usually a costly purchase.  It had ended disastrously:  or say, a running of the engine off the rails, and a speedy re-establishment of traffic.  Could it be a loss, that had led to the winning of his Nataly?  Can we really loathe the first of the steps when the one in due sequence, cousin to it, is a blessedness?  If we have been righted to health by a medical draught, we are bound to be respectful to our drug.  And so we are, in spite of Nature’s wry face and shiver at a mention of what we went through during those days, those horrible days:—­hide them!

The smothering of them from sight set them sounding he had to listen.  Colney Durance accused him of entering into bonds with somebody’s grandmother for the simple sake of browsing on her thousands:  a picture of himself too abhorrent to Victor to permit of any sort of acceptance.  Consequently he struck away to the other extreme of those who have a choice in mixed motives:  he protested that compassion had been the cause of it.  Looking at the circumstance now, he could see, allowing for human frailty-perhaps a wish to join the ranks of the wealthy compassion for the woman as the principal motive.  How often had she not in those old days praised his generosity for allying his golden youth to her withered age—­Mrs. Burman’s very words!  And she was a generous woman or had been:  she was generous in saying that.  Well, and she was generous in having a well-born, well-bred beautiful young creature like Nataly for her companion, when it was a case of need for the dear girl; and compassionately insisting, against remonstrances:  they were spoken by him, though they were but partial.  How, then, had she become—­at least, how was it that she could continue to behave as the vindictive Fury who persecuted remorselessly, would give no peace, poisoned the wells round every place where he and his dear one pitched their tent!

But at last she had come to charity, as he could well believe.  Not too late!  Victor’s feeling of gratitude to Mrs. Burman assured him it was genuine because of his genuine conviction, that she had determined to end her incomprehensibly lengthened days in reconcilement with him:  and he had always been ready to ‘forget and forgive.’  A truly beautiful old phrase!  It thrilled off the most susceptible of men.

His well-kept secret of the spacious country-house danced him behind a sober demeanour from one park to another; and along beside the drive to view of his townhouse—­unbeloved of the inhabitants, although by acknowledgement it had, as Fredi funnily drawled, to express her sense of justice in depreciation, ‘good accommodation.’  Nataly was at home, he was sure.  Time to be dressing:  sun sets at six-forty, he said, and glanced at the stained West, with an accompanying vision of outspread primroses flooding banks of shadowy fields near Lakelands.