ween her and Dudley, in
the figure of Mrs. Marsett. The Nesta who had been instructed to know
herself to be under a shadow, heard, she almost justified Dudley's
reproaches to her, for having made the acquaintance of the unhappy woman,
for having visited her, for having been, though but for a minute, at the
mercy of a coarse gentleman's pursuit. The recollection was a smart
buffet.

Her lighted mind punished her thus through her conjuring of Dudley's
words, should news of her relations with Mrs. Marsett reach him:--and she
would have to tell him. Would he not say: 'I have borne with the things
concerning your family. All the greater reason why I must insist'--he
would assuredly say he insisted (her humour caught at the word, as being
the very word one could foresee and clearly see him uttering in a fit of
vehemence) on her immediate abandonment of 'that woman.'

And with Nesta's present enlightenment by dusky beams, upon her
parentage, she listened abjectly to Dudley, or the opinion of the
majority. Would he not say or think, that her clinging to Mrs. Marsett
put them under a kind of common stamp, or gave the world its option to
class them together?

These were among the ideas chasing in a head destined to be a
battle-field for the enrichment of a harvest-field of them, while the
girl's face was hidden on Dorothea's lap, and her breast heaved and
heaved.

She distressed them when she rose, by saying she must instantly see her
mother.

They saw the pain their hesitation inflicted, and Dorothea said: 'Yes,
dear; any day you like.'

'To-morrow--I must go to her to-morrow!'

A suggestion of her mother's coming down, was faintly spoken by one lady,
echoed in a quaver by the other.

Nesta shook her head. To quiet the kind souls, she entreated them to give
their promise that they would invite her again.

Imagining the Hon. Dudley to have cast her off, both ladies embraced her:
not entirely yielding-up their hearts to her, by reason of the pernicious
new ideas now in the world to sap our foundations of morality; which
warned them of their duty to uphold mentally his quite justifiable
behaviour, even when compassionating the sufferings of the guiltless
creature loved by them.

CHAPTER XXXIV

CONTAINS DEEDS UNRELATED AND EXPOSITIONS OF FEELINGS

All through the afternoon and evening Skepsey showed indifference to
meals by continuing absent: and he was the one with whom Nesta would have
felt at home; more at