quaked under the crumbling structure.

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank
in dumbness. Her seeming intuition--if it was not a perception--of the
point where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened his
character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious
fear of his girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being
recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He tried to
think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effort
to imagine a reproof, showed him her spirit through her eyes: in her
deeds too: she had already done work on the road:--Colney Durance,
Dartrey Fenellan, anything but sentimentalists either of them, strongly
backing her, upholding her. Victor could no longer so naturally name her
Fredi.

He spoke it hastily, under plea of some humorous tenderness, when he
ventured. When Dudley, calling on him in the City to discuss the
candidature for the South London borough, named her Fredi, that he might
regain a vantage of familiarity by imitating her father, it struck Victor
as audacious. It jarred in his recollection, though the heir of the
earldom spoke in the tone of a lover, was really at high pitch. He
appeared to be appreciating her, to have suffered stings of pain; he
offered himself; he made but one stipulation. Victor regretfully assured
him, he feared he could do nothing. The thought of his entry into
Lakelands, with Nesta Victoria refusing the foundation stone of the
place, grew dim.

But he was now canvassing for the Borough, hearty at the new business as
the braced swimmer on seas, which instantly he became, with an end in
view to be gained.

Late one April night, expecting Nataly to have gone to bed, and Nesta to
be waiting for him, he reached home, and found Nataly in her sitting-room
alone. 'Nesta was tired,' she said: 'we have had a scene; she refuses Mr.
Sowerby; I am sick of pressing it; he is very much in earnest, painfully;
she blames him for disturbing me; she will not see the right course:--a
mother reads her daughter! If my girl has not guidance!--she means
rightly, she is rash.'

Nataly could not utter all that her insaneness of feeling made her think
with regard to Victor's daughter--daughter also of the woman whom her
hard conscience accused of inflammability. 'Here is a note from Dr.
Themison, dear.'

Victor seized it, perused, and drew the big breath.

'From Themison,