His gaze was any one of the Chapters upon Nesta.  The clerical gentleman’s voice was of a depth to claim for it the profoundest which can be thought or uttered; and Nesta’s tender youth had taken so strong an impression of sacredness from what Fenellan called ‘his chafer tones,’ that her looks were often given him in gratitude, for the mere sound.  Nataly also had her sense of safety in acquiescing to such a voice coming from such a garb.  Consequently, whenever Fenellan and Colney were at him, drawing him this way and that for utterances cathedral in sentiment and sonorousness, these ladies shed protecting beams; insomuch that he was inspired to the agreeable conceptions whereof frequently rash projects are an issue.

Touching the neighbours of Lakelands, they were principally enriched merchants, it appeared; a snippet or two of the fringe of aristocracy lay here and there among them; and one racy-of-the-soil old son of Thames, having the manners proper to last century’s yeoman.  Mr. Pempton knew something of this quaint Squire of Hefferstone, Beaves Urmsing by name; a ruddy man, right heartily Saxon; a still glowing brand amid the ashes of the Heptarchy hearthstone; who had a song, The Marigolds, which he would troll out for you anywhere, on any occasion.  To have so near to the metropolis one from the centre of the venerable rotundity of the country, was rare.  Victor exclaimed ‘Come!’ in ravishment over the picturesqueness of a neighbour carrying imagination away to the founts of England; and his look at Nataly proposed.  Her countenance was inapprehensive.  He perceived resistance, and said:  ’I have met two or three of them in the train:  agreeable men:  Gladding, the banker; a General Fanning; that man Blathenoy, great billbroker.  But the fact is, close on London, we’re independent of neighbours; we mean to be.  Lakelands and London practically join.’

‘The mother city becoming the suburb,’ murmured Colney, in report of the union.

‘You must expect to be invaded, sir,’ said Mr. Sowerby; and Victor shrugged:  ‘We are pretty safe.’

’The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one outside is heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,’ Fenellan threw out his airy nothing of a remark.

It struck on Nataly’s heart.  ‘So you will not let us be lonely here,’ she said to her guests.

The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations.  Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice, informed her of their ‘very deep happiness in the privilege.’

He comforted her.  Nesta smiled on him thankfully.

’Don’t imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from neighbours, in a house like this; and they have a claim,’ said Lady Grace, quitting the table.

Fenellan and Colney thought so: 

‘Like mice at a cupboard.’

‘Beetles in a kitchen.’

‘No, no-no, no!’ Victor shook head, pitiful over the good people likened to things unclean, and royally upraising them:  in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden incubi they had been upon his flatter moods of late.  ‘No, but it’s a rapture to breathe the air here!’ His lifted chest and nostrils were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar beside him.