mastered. Victor
could make her treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though
the heart protested. His first conquest of her was in her blood, to
weaken a spirit of resistance. For the precedent of submission is a charm
upon the faint-hearted through love: it unwinds, unwills them. Nataly
resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and she had her
moral sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting consciousness
of material support in the thought, that the day was not present, was
possibly distant, might never arrive. Would Victor's release come sooner?
And that was a prospect bearing resemblance to hopes of the cure of a
malady through a sharp operation.

These were matters going on behind the curtain; as wholly vital to her,
and with him at times almost as dominant, as the spiritual in memory,
when flesh has left but its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten;
and all their talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions
to Lakelands, music, public affairs, the pardonable foibles of friends
created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and heroines, exhibitions
of pictures, the sorrows of Crowned Heads, so serviceable ever to mankind
as an admonition to the ambitious, a salve to the envious!--in fine,
whatsoever can entertain or affect the most social of couples,
domestically without a care to appearance. And so far they
partially--dramatically--deceived themselves by imposing on the world
while they talked and duetted; for the purchase of furniture from a
flowing purse is a cheerful occupation; also a City issuing out of
hospital, like this poor City of London, inspires good citizens to
healthy activity. But the silence upon what they were most bent on, had
the sinister effect upon Victor, of obscuring his mental hold of the
beloved woman, drifting her away from him. In communicating Fenellan's
news through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. Burman's intentions, he was aware
that there was an obstacle to his being huggingly genial, even candidly
genial with her, until he could deal out further news, corroborative and
consecutive, to show the action of things as progressive. Fenellan had
sunk into his usual apathy:--and might plead the impossibility of his
moving faster than the woman professing to transform herself into,
beneficence out of malignity;--one could hear him saying the words!
Victor had not seen him since last Concert evening, and he deemed it as
well to hear the