must be one which could reproach, and
strike at errors; fence, and continually summon resources to engage the
electrical vitality of a man like Victor. It was an exultation of their
life together, a mark of his holiness for them both, that they had never
breathed a reproach upon one another.

She dropped away from ideas of remonstrance; faintly seeing, in her sigh
of submission, that the deficiency affecting her character would have
been supplied by a greater force of character, pressing either to speech
or acts. The confession of a fated inevitable in the mind, is weakness
prostrate. She knew it: but she could point to the manner of man she was
matched with; and it was not a poor excuse.

Mr. Barmby, she thought, deserved her gratitude in some degree
for stepping between Mr. Sowerby and Nesta. The girl not having
inclinations, and the young gentleman being devoid of stratagem, they
were easily kept from the dangerous count of two.

Mademoiselle would have said, that the shepherd also had rarely if ever
a minute quite alone with her lamb. Incredulously she perceived signs of
a shock. The secret following the signs was betrayed by Nesta in return
for a tender grasp of hands and a droll flutter of eyelids. Out it came,
on a nod first; then a dreary mention of a date, and an incident,
to bring it nearer to comprehension. Mr. Barmby--and decide who will
whether it is that Love was made to elude or that curates impelled by
his fires are subtle as nether--had outwitted French watchfulness by
stealing minutes enough on a day at Lakelands to declare himself. And
no wonder the girl looked so forlorn: he had shivered her mediaeval
forest-palace of illuminated glass, to leave her standing like a
mountain hind, that sniffs the tainted gale off the crag of her
first quick leap from hounds; her instincts alarmed, instead of rich
imagination colouring and fostering.

She had no memory for his words; so, and truly, she told her Louise:
meaning that she had only a spiceless memory; especially for the word
love in her ears from the mouth of a man.

There had been a dream of it; with the life-awakening marvel it would
be, the humbleness it would bring to her soul beneath the golden
clothing of her body: one of those faint formless dreams, which are as
the bend of grasses to the breath of a still twilight. She lived
too spiritedly to hang on any dream; and had moreover a muffled
dread-shadow-sister to the virginal desire--of this one,