Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at once imagination came to dust.  She had to thank him she knelt to him.  For the first time of her life she found herself seized with her sex’s shudder in the blood.

CHAPTER XXXV

In which again we make use of the old lamps for lighting an abysmal darkness

And if Nesta had looked out of her carriage-window soon after the train began to glide, her eagle of imagination would have reeled from the heights, with very different feelings, earlier, perhaps a captive, at sight of the tardy gentleman rushing along the platform, and bending ear to the footman Perrin, and staring for one lost.

The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an apprehension of the ominous in his having missed her.  It wound away, and left regrets, which raised a chorus of harsh congratulations from the opposite party of his internal parliament.

Neither party could express an opinion without rousing the other to an uproar.

He had met his cousin Southweare overnight.  He had heard, that there was talk of Miss Radnor.  Her name was in the mouth of Major Worrell.  It was coupled with the name of Mrs. Marsett.  A military captain, in the succession to be Sir Edward Marsett, bestowed on her the shadow of his name.

It could be certified, that Miss Radnor visited the woman at her house.  What are we to think of Miss Radnor, save that daughters of depraved parents! . . .  A torture undeserved is the Centaur’s shirt for driving us to lay about in all directions.  He who had swallowed so much—­a thunderbolt:  a still undigested discharge from the perplexing heavens jumped frantic under the pressure upon him of more, and worse.  A girl getting herself talked of at a Club!  And she of all young ladies should have been the last to draw round her that buzz of tongues.  On such a subject!—­The parents pursuing their career of cynical ostentation in London, threw an evil eye of heredity on their offspring in the egg; making anything credible, pointing at tendencies.

An alliance with her was impossible.  So said disgust.  Anger came like a stronger beast, and extinguished the safety there was in the thing it consumed, by growing so excessive as to require tempering with drops of compassion; which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness; and the moment that was conceived, he had a passion to commit the horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and dissolved his Heart in the grandeur, and slaved himself again.