Victor’s thoughts upon the instrument for striking that, blow, led him to suppose Mr. Sowerby might be meditating on the extent of the young lady’s fortune.  He talked randomly of money, in a way to shatter Nataly’s conception of him.  He talked of City affairs at table, as it had been his practice to shun the doing; and hit the resounding note on mines, which have risen in the market like the crest of a serpent, casting a certain spell upon the mercantile understanding.  ’Fredi’s diamonds from her own mine, or what once was—­and she still reserves a share,’ were to be shown to Mr. Sowerby.

Nataly respected the young fellow for not displaying avidity at the flourish of the bait, however it might be affecting him; and she fancied that he did laboriously, in his way earnestly, study her girl, to sound for harmony between them, previous to a wooing.  She was a closer reader of social character than Victor; from refraining to run on the broad lines which are but faintly illustrative of the individual one in being common to all—­unless we have hit by chance on an example of the downright in roguery or folly or simple goodness.  Mr. Sowerby’g bearing to Nesta was hardly warmed by the glitter of diamonds.  His next visit showed him livelier in courtliness, brighter, fresher; but that was always his way at the commencement of every visit, as if his reflections on the foregone had come to a satisfactory conclusion; and the labours of the new study of the maiden ensued again in due course to deaden him.

Gentleman he was.  In the recognition of his quality as a man of principle and breeding, Nataly was condemned by thoughts of Nesta’s future to question whether word or act of hers should, if inclination on both sides existed, stand between her girl and a true gentleman.  She counselled herself, as if the counsel were in requisition, to be passive; and so doing, she more acutely than Victor—­save in his chance flashes—­discerned the twist of her very nature caused by their false position.  And her panacea for ills, the lost little cottage, would not have averted it:  she would there have had the same coveting desire to name a man of breeding, honour, station, for Nesta’s husband.  Perhaps in the cottage, choosing at leisure, her consent to see the brilliant young creature tied to the best of dull men would have been unready, without the girl to push it.  For the Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in liveliness; he took the second part, as it is painful for a woman with the old-fashioned ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold; resembling in his look the deaf, who constantly require to have an observation repeated; resembling the most intelligent of animals, which we do not name, and we reprove ourselves for seeing likeness.