as of
a soul at holiday. Eyes had been given this man to spy the pleasures
and reveal the joy of his pasture on them: gateways to the sunny
within, issues to all the outer Edens. Few of us possess that double
significance of the pure sparkle. It captivated Lady Grace. She said a
word of it to Fenellan: 'There is a man who can feel rapture!' He had
not to follow the line of her sight: she said so on a previous evening,
in a similar tone; and for a woman to repeat herself, using the very
emphasis, was quaint. She could feel rapture; but her features and limbs
were in motion to designate it, between simply and wilfully; she had
the instinct to be dimpling, and would not for a moment control it, and
delighted in its effectiveness: only when observing that winged sparkle
of eyes did an idea of envy, hardly a consciousness, inform her of being
surpassed; and it might be in the capacity to feel besides the gift to
express. Such a reflection relating to a man, will make women mortally
sensible that they are the feminine of him.

'His girl has the look,' Fenellan said in answer.

She cast a glance at Nesta, then at Nataly.

And it was true, that the figure of a mother, not pretending to the
father's vividness, eclipsed it somewhat in their child. The mother gave
richness of tones, hues and voice, and stature likewise, and the thick
brown locks, which in her own were threads of gold along the brush from
the temples: she gave the girl a certain degree of the composure of
manner which Victor could not have bestowed; she gave nothing to clash
with his genial temper; she might be supposed to have given various
qualities, moral if you like. But vividness was Lady Grace's admirable
meteor of the hour: she was unable to perceive, so as to compute, the
value of obscurer lights. Under the charm of Nataly's rich contralto
during a duet with Priscilla Graves, she gesticulated ecstasies, and
uttered them, and genuinely; and still, when reduced to meditations,
they would have had no weight, they would hardly have seemed an apology
for language, beside Victor's gaze of pleasure in the noble forthroll of
the notes.

Nataly heard the invitation of the guests of the evening to Lakelands
next day.

Her anxieties were at once running about to gather provisions for the
baskets. She spoke of them at night. But Victor had already put the
matter in the hands of Madame Callet; and all that could be done, would
be done by Armandine, he knew. 'If s