with a distant but burning wish
all the while, that the suitor had been one to touch his heart and open
it, inspiriting it--as could have been done--to disclose for good and all
the things utterable. Victor loved clear honesty, as he loved light: and
though he hated to be accused of not showing a clean face in the light,
he would have been moved and lifted to confess to a spot by the touch at
his heart. Dudley Sowerby's deficiencies, however, were outweighed by the
palpable advantages of his birth, his prospects, and his good repute for
conduct; add thereto his gentlemanly manners. Victor sighed again over
his poor Fredi; and in telling Mr. Sowerby that the choice must be left
to her, he had the regrets of a man aware of his persuasive arts and how
they would be used, to think that he was actually making the choice.

Observe how fatefully he who has a scheme is the engine of it; he is no
longer the man of his tastes or of his principles; he is on a line of
rails for a terminus; and he may cast languishing eyes across waysides to
right and left, he has doomed himself to proceed, with a self-devouring
hunger for the half desired; probably manhood gone at the embrace of it.
This may be or not, but Nature has decreed to him the forfeit of
pleasure. She bids us count the passage of a sober day for the service of
the morrow; that is her system; and she would have us adopt it, to keep
in us the keen edge for cutting, which is the guarantee of enjoyment:
doing otherwise, we lose ourselves in one or other of the furious matrix
instincts; we are blunt to all else.

Young Dudley fully agreed that the choice must be with Miss Radnor; he
alluded to her virtues, her accomplishments. He was waxing to fervidness.
He said he must expect competitors; adding, on a start, that he was to
say, from his mother, she, in the case of an intention to present Miss
Radnor at Court . . . .

Victor waved hand for a finish, looking as though, his head had come out
of hot water. He sacrificed Royalty to his necessities, under a kind of
sneer at its functions: 'Court! my girl? But the arduous duties are over
for the season. We are a democratic people retaining the seductions of
monarchy, as a friend says; and of course a girl may like to count among
the flowers of the kingdom for a day, in the list of Court presentations;
no harm. Only there's plenty of time . . . very young girls have their
heads turned--though I don't say, don't imagine, my girl woul