whether word or act of hers should, if inclination
on both sides existed, stand between her girl and a true gentleman.
She counselled herself, as if the counsel were in requisition, to be
passive; and so doing, she more acutely than Victor--save in his chance
flashes--discerned the twist of her very nature caused by their false
position. And her panacea for ills, the lost little cottage, would not
have averted it: she would there have had the same coveting desire to
name a man of breeding, honour, station, for Nesta's husband. Perhaps in
the cottage, choosing at leisure, her consent to see the brilliant young
creature tied to the best of dull men would have been unready, without
the girl to push it. For the Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in
liveliness; he took the second part, as it is painful for a woman
with the old-fashioned ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold;
resembling in his look the deaf, who constantly require to have an
observation repeated; resembling the most intelligent of animals, which
we do not name, and we reprove ourselves for seeing likeness.

Yet the likeness or apparent likeness would suggest that we have not so
much to fear upon the day of the explanation to him. Some gain is there.
Shameful thought! Nataly hastened her mind to gather many instances or
indications testifying to the sterling substance in young Mr. Sowerby,
such as a mother would pray for her son-in-law to possess. She
discovered herself feeling as the burdened mother, not providently for
her girl, in the choice of a mate. The perception was clear, and not the
less did she continue working at the embroidery of Mr. Sowerby on the
basis of his excellent moral foundations, all the while hoping, praying,
that he might not be lured on to the proposal for Nesta. But her
subservience to the power of the persuasive will in Victor--which was
like the rush of a conflagration--compelled her to think realizingly of
any scheme he allowed her darkly to read.

Opposition to him, was comparable to the stand of blocks of timber
before flame. Colney Durance had done her the mischief we take from the
pessimist when we are overweighted: in darkening the vision of external
aid from man or circumstance to one who felt herself mastered. Victor
could make her treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though
the heart protested. His first conquest of her was in her blood, to
weaken a spirit of resistance. For the precedent of submis