ently: ('lead a
kingdom,' was the phrase behind the curtain within her shy bosom;) and
it revealed her to herself, upon reflection, as being still the Nataly
who drank the cup with him, to join her fate with his.

And why not? Was that regretted? Far from it. In her maturity, the woman
was unable to send forth any dwelling thought or more than a flight
of twilight fancy, that cancelled the deed of her youth, and therewith
seemed to expunge near upon the half--of her term of years. If it came
to consideration of her family and the family's opinion of her conduct,
her judgement did not side with them or with herself, it whirled, swam
to a giddiness and subsided.

Of course, if she and Victor were to inhabit a large country-house, they
might as well have remained at Craye Farm or at Creckholt; both places
dear to them in turn. Such was the plain sense of the surface
question. And how strange it was to her, that he, of the most quivering
sensitiveness on her behalf; could not see, that he threw her into
situations where hard words of men and women threatened about her head;
where one or two might on a day, some day, be heard; and where, in the
recollection of two years back, the word 'Impostor' had smacked her on
both cheeks from her own mouth.

Now once more they were to run the same round of alarms, undergo the
love of the place, with perpetual apprehensions of having to leave it:
alarms, throbbing suspicions, like those of old travellers through the
haunted forest, where whispers have intensity of meaning, and unseeing
we are seen, and unaware awaited.

Nataly shook the rolls of her thick brown hair from her forehead; she
took strength from a handsome look of resolution in the glass. She could
always honestly say, that her courage would not fail him.

Victor tapped at the door; he stepped into the room, wearing his evening
white flower over a more open white waistcoat; and she was composed and
uninquiring. Their Nesta was heard on the descent of the stairs, with a
rattle of Donizetti's Il segreto to the skylights.

He performed his never-omitted lover's homage.

Nataly enfolded him in a homely smile. 'A country-house? We go and see
it to-morrow?'

'And you've been pining for a country home, my dear soul.'

'After the summer six weeks, the house in London does not seem a home to
return to.'

'And next day, Nataly draws five thousand pounds for the first sketch of
the furniture.'

'There is the Creckholt...'