Victor’s eloquence, Victor’s influence, Victor’s child he carried them as a floodstream, insomuch, that their reception of this young creature of the blot on her birth, was regarded by them in the unmentioned abstract, and the child’s presence upon earth seen with the indulgence (without the naughty curiosity) of the loyal moral English for the numerous offspring of the peccadillos of their monarchs.  These things pass muster from being ‘Britannically cocooned in the purple,’ says our irreverent satirist; and the maiden ladies’ passion of devotion to ‘the blood’ helped to blind them; but still more so did the imperious urgency to curtain closely the night of Tasso, throwing all its consequences upon Victor’s masterful tongue.  Whence it ensued (and here is the danger for illogical individuals as well as vast communities, who continue to batten upon fiction when the convenience of it has taken the place of pleasure), that they had need to exalt his eloquence, for a cloak to their conduct; and doing it, they fell into a habit of yielding to him; they disintegrated under him; rules, principles, morality, were shaken to some confusion.  And still proceeding thus, they now and then glanced back, more wonderingly than convicted sinners upon their days of early innocence, at the night when successfully they withstood him.  They who had doubted of the rightness of letting Victor’s girl come into collision with two clerical gentlemen, one of whom was married, permitted him now to bring the Hon. Dudley Sowerby to their house, and make appointments to meet Mr. Dudley Sowerby under a roof that sheltered a young lady, evidently the allurement to the scion of aristocracy; of whose family Mr. Stuart Rem had spoken in the very kindling hushed tones, proper to the union of a sacerdotal and an English citizen’s veneration.

How would it end?  And if some day this excellent Mr. Dudley Sowerby reproached them!  He could not have a sweeter bride, one more truly a lady in education and manners; but the birth! the child’s name!  Their trouble was emitted in a vapour of interjections.  Very perplexing was it for the good ladies of strict principles to reflect, as dimly they did, that the concrete presence of dear Nesta silenced and overcame objections to her being upon earth.  She seemed, as it were, a draught of redoubtable Nature inebriating morality.  But would others be similarly affected?  Victor might get his release, to do justice to the mother:  it would not cover the child.  Prize as they might the quality of the Radnor blood (drawn from the most ancient of original Britain’s princes), there was also the Cantor blood for consideration; and it was old, noble, proud.  Would it be satisfied in matching itself with great wealth, a radiant health, and the good looks of a young flower?  For the sake of the dear girl, the ladies hoped that it would; and they enlarged the outline of their wedding present, while, in their minds, the noble English family which could be satisfied so, was lowered, partaking of the taint they had personally ceased to recognize.