urtain covering his lost
Idea. He felt sure he should grasp it soon and enter into its daylight:
a muffled voice within him said, that he was kept waiting to do so by
the inexplicable tardiness of a certain one to rise ascending to her
spiritual roost. She was now harmless to strike: Themison, Carling,
Jarniman, even the Rev. Groseman Buttermore, had been won to the cause
of humanity. Her ascent, considering her inability to do further harm
below, was most mysteriously delayed. Owing to it, in a manner almost as
mysterious, he was kept crossing a bridge having a slippery bit on it.
Thanks to his gallant Fredi, he had found his feet again. But there was
a bruise where, to his honour, he felt tenderest. And Fredi away, he
might be down again--for no love of a slippery bit, proved slippery,
one might guess, by a predecessor or two. Ta-ta-ta-to and mum! Still, in
justice to the little woman, she had been serviceable.

She would be still more so, if a member of Parliament now on his back
here we are with the murder-eye again!

Nesta's never speaking of Lakelands clouded him a little, as an
intimation of her bent of mind.

'And does my girl come to her dada to-day?' he said, on the fifth
morning since her return; prepared with a villanous resignation to hear,
that this day she abstained, though he had the wish for her coming.

'Why, don't you know,' said she, 'we all meet to have tea in Mr.
Durance's chambers; and I walk back with you, and there we are joined by
mama; and we are to have a feast of literary celebrities.'

'Colney's selection of them! And Simeon Fenellan, I hope. Perhaps
Dartrey. Perhaps... eh?'

She reddened. So Dudley Sowerby's unspoken name could bring the blush
to her cheeks. Dudley had his excuses in his brother's condition. His
father's health, too, was--but this was Dudley calculating. Where there
are coronets, calculations of this sort must needs occur; just as where
there are complications. Odd, one fancies it, that we walking along the
pavement of civilized life, should be perpetually summoning Orcus to our
aid, for the sake of getting a clear course.

'And supposing a fog, my dearie?' he said.

'The daughter in search of her father carries a lamp to light her to him
through densest fogs as well as over deserts,' etc. She declaimed a long
sentence, to set the ripple running in his features; and when he left
the room for a last word with Armandine, she flung arms round her
mother's neck, murmu