Nesta’s ears hummed with the name of Major Worrell.

‘Skepsey did come back to London with a rather damaged frontispiece,’ Victor said.  ‘He can’t have joined those people?’

‘They may suit one of your militant peacemakers,’ interposed Fenellan.  ’The most placable creatures alive, and the surest for getting-up a shindy.’

‘Suit him!  They’re the scandal of our streets.’  Victor was pricked with a jealousy of them for beguiling him of his trusty servant.

‘Look at your country, see where it shows its vitality,’ said Colney.  ‘You don’t see elsewhere any vein in movement-movement,’ he harped on the word Victor constantly employed to express the thing he wanted to see.  ’Think of that, when the procession sets your teeth on edge.  They’re honest foes of vice, and they move:—­in England!  Pulpit-preaching has no effect.  For gross maladies, gross remedies.  You may judge of what you are by the quality of the cure.  Puritanism, I won’t attempt to paint—­it would barely be decent; but compare it with the spectacle of English frivolity, and you’ll admit it to be the best show you make.  It may still be the saving of you—­on the level of the orderly ox:  I ’ve not observed that it aims at higher.  And talking of the pulpit, Barmby is off to the East, has accepted a Shoreditch curacy, Skepsey tells me.’

‘So there’s the reason for our not seeing him!’ Victor turned to Nesta.

‘Papa, you won’t be angry with Skepsey if he has joined those people,’ said Nesta.  ‘I’m sure he thinks of serving his country, Mr. Durance.’

Colney smiled on her.  ‘And you too?’

‘If women knew how!’

‘They’re hitting on more ways at present than the men—­in England.’

’But, Mr. Durance, it speaks well for England when they’re allowed the chance here.’

‘Good!’ Fenellan exclaimed.  ’And that upsets his placement of the modern national genders:  Germany masculine, France feminine, Old England what remains.’

Victor ruffled and reddened on his shout of ‘Neuter?’

Their circle widened.  Nesta knew she was on promotion, by her being led about and introduced to ladies.  They were encouraging with her.  One of them, a Mrs. Marina Floyer, had recently raised a standard of feminine insurrection.  She said:  ’I hear your praises from Mr. Durance.  He rarely praises.  You have shown capacity to meditate on the condition of women, he says.’

Nesta drew a shorter breath, with a hope at heart.  She speculated in the dark, as to whether her aim to serve and help was not so friendless.  And did Mr. Durance approve?  But surely she stood in a glorious England if there were men and women to welcome a girl to their councils.  Oh! that is the broad free England where gentlemen and gentlewomen accept of the meanest aid to cleanse the land of its iniquities, and do not suffer shame to smite a young face for touching upon horrors with a pure design.