Skepsey’s face was just sufferable by light of day, if one pitied reflecting on his honest intentions; it ceased to discolour another.  He dropped a few particulars of his hero in action; but the heroine eclipsed.  He was heavier than ever with his Matilda Pridden.  At the hour for departure, Perrin had a conveyance at the door.  Nesta sent off Skepsey with a complimentary message to Captain Dartrey.  Her maid Mary begged her to finish her breakfast; Manton suggested the waiting a further two or three minutes.  ‘We must not be late,’ Nesta said; and when the minute-hand of the clock marked ample time for the drive to the station, she took her seat and started, keeping her face resolutely set seaward, having at her ears the ring of a cry that was to come from Manton.  But Manton was dumb; she spied no one on the pavement who signalled to stop them.  And no one was at the station to greet them.  They stepped into a carriage where they were alone.  Dudley with his dreaded generosity melted out of Nesta’s thoughts, like the vanishing steam-wreath on the dip between the line and the downs.

She passed into music, as she always did under motion of carriages and trains, whether in happiness or sadness:  and the day being one that had a sky, the scenic of music swung her up to soar.  None of her heavy burdens enchained, though she knew the weight of them, with those of other painful souls.  The pipeing at her breast gave wings to large and small of the visible; and along the downs went stateliest of flowing dances; a copse lengthened to forest; a pool of cattle-water caught grey for flights through enchantment.  Cottage-children, wherever seen in groups, she wreathed above with angels to watch them.  Her mind all the while was busy upon earth, embracing her mother, eyeing her father.  Imagination and our earthly met midway, and still she flew, until she was brought to the ground by a shot.  She struggled to rise, uplifting Judith Marsett:  a woman not so very much older than her own teens, in the count of years, and ages older; and the world pulling at her heels to keep her low.  That unhappiest had no one but a sisterly girl to help her:  and how she clung to the slender help!  Who else was there?

The good and the bad in the woman struck separate blows upon the girl’s resonant nature.  She perceived the good, and took it into her reflections.  The bad she divined:  it approached like some threat of inflammation.  Natures resonant as that which animated this girl, are quick at the wells of understanding:  and she had her intimations of the world’s wisdom in withholding contagious presences from the very mangy of the young, who may not have an, aim, or ideal or strong human compassion, for a preservative.  She was assured of her possessing it.  She asked herself in her mother’s voice, and answered mutely.  She had the certainty:  for she rebuked the slavish feverishness of the passion, as betrayed by Mrs. Marsett; and the woman’s tone, as of strung wires ringing on a rage of the wind.  Then followed her cry for the man who could speak to Captain Marsett of his duty in honour.  An image of one, accompanying the faster beats of her heart, beguiled her to think away from the cause.  He, the one man known to her, would act the brother’s part on behalf of the hapless creature.