.

The two dear ones showed themselves heart in heart together once more;
each looked the happier for it. Dartrey was among their dinner-guests,
and Nataly took him to her little blue-room before she went to bed. He
did not speak of their conversation to Victor, but counselled him to
keep her from excitement. 'My dear fellow, if you had seen her with Mrs.
Burman!' Victor said, and loudly praised her coolness. She was never
below a situation, he affirmed.

He followed his own counsel to humour his Nataly. She began panting at
a word about Mr. Barmby's ready services. When, however, she related
the state of affairs between Dartrey and Nesta, by the avowal of each
of them to her, he said, embracing her: 'Your wisdom shall guide us, my
love,' and almost extinguished a vexation by concealing it.

She sighed: 'If one could think, that a girl with Nesta's revolutionary
ideas of the duties of women, and their powers, would be safe--or at all
rightly guided by a man who is both one of the noblest and the wildest
in the ideas he entertains!'

Victor sighed too. He saw the earldom, which was to dazzle the gossips,
crack on the sky in a futile rocket-bouquet.

She was distressed; she moaned: 'My girl! my girl: I should wish to
leave her with one who is more fixed--the old-fashioned husband. New
ideas must come in politics, but in Society!--and for women! And the
young having heads, are the most endangered. Nesta vows her life to it!
Dartrey supports her!'

'See Colney,' said Victor. 'Odd, Colney does you good; some queer way he
has. Though you don't care for his RIVAL TONGUES,--and the last number
was funny, with Semhians on the Pacific, impressively addressing a
farewell to his cricket-bat, before he whirls it away to Neptune--and
the blue hand of his nation's protecting God observed to seize it!--Dead
failure with the public, of course! However, he seems to seem wise with
you. The poor old fellow gets his trouncing from the critics monthly.
See Colney to-morrow, my love. Now go to sleep. We have got over the
worst. I speak at my Meeting to-morrow and am a champagne-bottle of
notes and points for them.'

His lost Idea drew close to him in sleep: or he thought so, when awaking
to the conception of a people solidified, rich and poor, by the common
pride of simple manhood. But it was not coloured, not a luminous globe:
and the people were in drab, not a shining army on the march to meet the
Future. It looked like a paragraph