She would come out of it glorified.  She would be reconciled with her family.  With her story of her devotion to the man loving her, the world would know her for the heroine she was:  a born lady, in appearance and manner an empress among women.  It was a story to be pleaded in any court, before the sternest public.  Mrs. Burman had thrown her into temptation’s way.  It was a story to touch the heart, as none other ever written of over all the earth was there a woman equalling his Nataly!

And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses envious:—­she would inherit . . . he ran up an arithmetical column, down to a line of figures in addition, during three paces of his feet.  Dartrey Fenellan had said of little Nesta once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling as mid-sea foam.  Happy he who wins her!  But she was one of the young women who are easily pleased and hardly enthralled.  Her father strained his mind for the shape of the man to accomplish the feat.  Whether she had an ideal of a youth in her feminine head, was beyond his guessing.  She was not the damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical prince, and try it upon all comers to discover him:  as is done by some; excuseably, if we would be just.  Nesta was of the elect, for whom excuses have not to be made.  She would probably like a flute-player best; because her father played the flute, and she loved him—­laughably a little maiden’s reason!  Her father laughed at her.

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