Mrs. Burman Radnor had dropped words touching a husband, and of her desire to communicate with him, in the event of her being given over to the surgeons:  she had said, that her husband was a greatly gifted man; setting her head in a compassionate swing.  This revelation of the husband soon after, was filling.  And this Mr. Radnor’s comrade’s manner of it, was winning:  a not too self-justifying tone; not void of feeling for the elder woman; with a manly eulogy of the younger, who had flung away the world for him and borne him their one dear child.  Victor took the blame wholly upon himself.  ‘It is right that you should know,’ he said to the doctor’s thoughtful posture; and he stressed the blame; and a flame shot across his eyeballs.  He brought home to his hearer the hurricane of a man he was in the passion:  indicating the subjection of such a temperament as this Victor Radnor’s to trials of the moral restraints beyond his human power.

Dr. Themison said:  ’Would you—­we postpone that as long as we can:  but supposing the poor lady . . . ?’

Victor broke in:  ‘I see her wish:  I will.’

The clash of his answer rang beside Dr. Themison’s faltering query.

We are grateful when spared the conclusion of a sentence born to stammer.  If for that only, the doctor pressed Victor’s hand warmly.

’I may, then, convey some form of assurance, that a request of the kind will be granted?’ he said.

‘She has but to call me to her,’ said Victor, stiffening his back.

CHAPTER XX

THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS

Round the neighbourhood of Lakelands it was known that the day of the great gathering there had been authoritatively foretold as fine, by Mr. Victor Radnor; and he delivered his prophecy in the teeth of the South-western gale familiar to our yachting month; and he really inspired belief or a kind of trust; some supposing him to draw from reserves of observation, some choosing to confide in the singularly winged sparkle of his eyes.  Lady Rodwell Blachington did; and young Mrs. Blathenoy; and Mrs. Fanning; they were enamoured of it.  And when women stand for Hope, and any worshipped man for Promise, nothing less than redoubled confusion of him dissolves the union.  Even then they cling to it, under an ejaculation, that it might and should have been otherwise; fancy partly has it otherwise, in her caerulean home above the weeping.  So it is good at all points to prophecy with the aspect of the radiant day foretold.

A storm, bearing battle overhead, tore the night to pieces.  Nataly’s faith in the pleasant prognostic wavered beneath the crashes.  She had not much power of heart to desire anything save that which her bosom disavowed.  Uproar rather appeased her, calmness agitated.  She wished her beloved to be spared from a disappointment, thinking he deserved all successes, because of the rigours inflicted by