ad to say, Victor
recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for.
And now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the blue
butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor may
bring news.'

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps.'

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie
down after talking. She has a child's confidence in you.'

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular
ejaculation which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday.
He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of
his age; and he went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of
years should give him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her
was an ennobling equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the
active souls of the world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She,
the little Nesta, the tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though
she was, already in the fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the
simply Christian. The worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not
of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary,
consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the
smirch of evil, and are the ornaments of their country, glory of a
country prizing ornaments higher than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by
Mrs. Marsett--not incredulous of the girl's heroism: that capacity
he caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the
measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:--but her beauty, or
the form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot of
thought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed to
service along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of this
earth. Nesta was of the blooming earth. Where do we meet girl or woman
comparable to garden-flowers, who can dare to touch to lift the spotted
of her sex? He was puzzled by Nesta's unlikeness in deeds and in aspect.
He remembered her eyes, on the day when he and Colonel Sudley beheld
her; presently he was at quiet grapple with her mind. His doubts cleared
off. Then the question came, How could a girl of heroical character be
attached to the man Sowerby? That entirely passed belief.

And was it possible his wishes beguiled his hearing?