sank down among the unreasoning abject;--not this
time with her perfect love of him, but with a resistance and a dubiety
under compression. For she had not quite comprehended why Nesta should
go. This readiness of the Duvidney ladies to receive the girl, stopped
her mental inquiries.

She begged for a week's delay; 'before the parting'; as her dear old
silly mother's pathos whimpered it, of the separation for a month! and he
smiled and hummed pleasantly at any small petition, thinking her in error
to expect Dartrey's return to town before the close of a week; and then
wondering at women, mildly denouncing in his heart the mothers who ran
risk of disturbing their daughters' bosoms with regard to particular
heroes married or not. Dartrey attracted women: he was one of the men who
do it without effort. Victor's provident mind blamed the mother for the
indiscreetness of her wish to have him among them. But Dudley had been
making way bravely of late; he improved; he began to bloom, like a Spring
flower of the garden protected from frosts under glass; and Fredi was the
sheltering and nourishing bestower of the lessons. One could see, his
questions and other little points revealed, that he had a certain lover's
dread of Dartrey Fenellan; a sort of jealousy: Victor understood the
feeling. To love a girl, who has her ideal of a man elsewhere in another;
though she may know she never can wed the man, and has not the hope of
it; is torment to the lover quailing, as we do in this terrible season of
the priceless deliciousness, stripped against all the winds that blow;
skinless at times. One gets up a sympathy for the poor shy dependent
shivering lover. Nevertheless, here was young Dudley waking, visibly
becoming bolder. As in the flute-duets, he gained fire from concert. The
distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge was two miles and a quarter.

Instead of the delay of a whole week, Victor granted four days, which
embraced a musical evening at Mrs. John Cormyn's on the last of the days,
when Nesta was engaged to sing with her mother a duet of her own
composition, the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from
rigid Herr Strauscher, who had said what he had said, in letting it pass:
eulogy, coming from him. So Victor heard, and he doated am the surprise
to come for him, in a boyish anticipation. The girl's little French
ballads under tutelage of Louise de Seilles promised, though they were
imitative. If Strauscher let this