He clung to his mistrust the more because of a warning he had from the silenced natural voice:  somewhat as we may behold how the Conservatism of a Class, in a world of all the evidences showing that there is no stay to things, comes of the intuitive discernment of its finality.  His mistrust was his own; and Nesta was not; not yet; though a step would make her his own.  Instinct prompting to the step, was a worthless adviser.  It spurred him, nevertheless.

He called at the Club for his cousin Southweare, with whom he was not in sympathy; and had information that, Southweare said, ’made the girl out all right.’  Girls in these days do things which the sainted stay-at-homes preceding them would not have dreamed of doing.  Something had occurred, relating to Major Worrell:  he withdrew Miss Radnor’s name, acknowledged himself mistaken or amended his report of her, in some way, not quite intelligible.  Dudley was accosted by Simeon Fenellan; subsequently by Dartrey.  There was gossip over the latter gentleman’s having been up before the magistrate, talk of a queer kind of stick, and Dartrey said, laughing, to Simeon:  ’Rather lucky I bled the rascal’;—­whatever the meaning.  She nursed one of her adorations for this man, who had yesterday, apparently, joined in a street-fray; so she partook of the stain of the turbid defacing all these disorderly people.

At his hotel at breakfast the next morning, a newspaper furnished an account of Captain Dartrey Fenellan’s participation in the strife, after mention of him as nephew of the Earl of Clanconan, ’now a visitor to our town’; and his deeds were accordant with his birth.  Such writing was enough to send Dudley an eager listener to Colney Durance.  What a people!

Mr. Dartrey Fenellan’s card compelled Dudley presently to receive him.

Dartrey, not debarred by considerations, that an allusion to Miss Radnor could be conveyed only in the most delicately obscure manner, spared him no more than the plain English of his relations with her.  Requested to come to the Club, at a certain hour of the afternoon, that he might hear Major Worrell’s personal contradiction of scandal involving the young lady’s name, together with his apology, etc., Dudley declined:  and he was obliged to do it curtly; words were wanting.  They are hard to find for wounded sentiments rendered complex by an infusion of policy.  His present mood, with the something new to digest, held the going to Major Worrell a wrong step; he behaved as if the speaking to Dartrey Fenellan pledged him hardly less.  And besides he had a physical abhorrence, under dictate of moral reprobation, of the broad-shouldered sinewy man, whose look of wiry alertness pictured the previous day’s gory gutters.

Dartrey set sharp eyes on him for an instant, bowed; and went.

CHAPTER XXXVI

NESTA AND HER FATHER