return to his legs; he recollected, that at the very edge of
the fall he had Armandine strongly in his mind. She was to do her part:
Fenellan and Colney on the surface, she below: and hospitality was to do
its part, and music was impressed--the innocent Concerts; his wealth, all
his inventiveness were to serve;--and merely to attract and win the
tastes of people, for a social support to Lakelands! Merely that? Much
more:--if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him to form an
estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of his present
disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result, that was
astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt imagination
starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn, that the man
with a material object in aim, is the man of his object; and the nearer
to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self; he is more the
arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for scheming: and
success is costly; we find we have pledged the better half of ourselves
to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of our prize! He
was, however, learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly's defective
sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she depressed. A
shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge seemed to cross him from the
close flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only, that it would,
if caught, have been an answer to the thought disturbing him.

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the
descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sight, coming swift as the
point of an outrigger over the flood.

CHAPTER X

SKEPSEY IN MOTION

The bearer of his master's midday letters from London shot beyond Nataly
as soon as seen, with an apparent snap of his body in passing. He steamed
to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning at the same
rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much respected. He
had left the railway-station on foot instead of taking a fly, because of
a calculation that he would save three minutes; which he had not lost for
having to come through the raincloud. 'Perhaps the contrary,' Skepsey
said: it might be judged to have accelerated his course: and his hat
dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his hands, cheerful as an
ouzel-cock when the sun is out again.

'Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?' Colney inquired of him.
A