‘She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not quite strong,’ said Nataly.  ‘You have not seen . . .?’

’Dudley Sowerby?  He’s at Cronidge, I believe.  His elder brother’s in a bad way.  Bad business, this looking to a death.’

Nataly eyes revealed a similar gulf.

Let it be cast on Society, then!  A Society opposing Nature forces us to these murderous looks upon impediments.  But what of a Society in the dance with Nature?  Victor did not approve of that.  He began, under the influence of Nesta’s companionship, to see the Goddess Nature there is in a chastened nature.  And this view shook the curtain covering his lost Idea.  He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight:  a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by the inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to her spiritual roost.  She was now harmless to strike:  Themison, Carling, Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause of humanity.  Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harm below, was most mysteriously delayed.  Owing to it, in a manner almost as mysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having a slippery bit on it.  Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he had found his feet again.  But there was a bruise where, to his honour, he felt tenderest.  And Fredi away, he might be down again—­for no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery, one might guess, by a predecessor or two.  Ta-ta-ta-to and mum!  Still, in justice to the little woman, she had been serviceable.

She would be still more so, if a member of Parliament now on his back here we are with the murder-eye again!

Nesta’s never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, as an intimation of her bent of mind.

‘And does my girl come to her dada to-day?’ he said, on the fifth morning since her return; prepared with a villanous resignation to hear, that this day she abstained, though he had the wish for her coming.

‘Why, don’t you know,’ said she, ’we all meet to have tea in Mr. Durance’s chambers; and I walk back with you, and there we are joined by mama; and we are to have a feast of literary celebrities.’

’Colney’s selection of them!  And Simeon Fenellan, I hope.  Perhaps Dartrey.  Perhaps . . . eh?’

She reddened.  So Dudley Sowerby’s unspoken name could bring the blush to her cheeks.  Dudley had his excuses in his brother’s condition.  His father’s health, too, was—­but this was Dudley calculating.  Where there are coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; just as where there are complications.  Odd, one fancies it, that we walking along the pavement of civilized life, should be perpetually summoning Orcus to our aid, for the sake of getting a clear course.

‘And supposing a fog, my dearie?’ he said.

’The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to light her to him through densest fogs as well as over deserts,’ etc.  She declaimed a long sentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left the room for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her mother’s neck, murmuring:  ‘Mother! mother!’ a cry equal to ‘I am sure I do right,’ and understood so by Nataly approving it; she too on the line of her instinct, without an object in sight.