f the conception of
Lakelands; if indeed they were not conceived together in one; and the
young gentleman had moral character, good citizen substance, and station,
rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was firm. Yet so far was
it from hearty, that when hearing a professed satirist like Colney
Durance remark on the decorous manner of Dudley's transparent courtship
of the girl, under his look of an awakened approval of himself, that he
appeared to be asking everybody:--Do you not think I bid fair for an
excellent father of Philistines?--Victor had a nip of spite at the
thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the grandfather. Poor
Fredi, too!--necessarily the mother: condemned by her hard fate to feel
proud of Philistine babies! Though women soon get reconciled to it! Or do
they? They did once. What if his Fredi turned out one of the modern young
women, who have drunk of ideas? He caught himself speculating on that, as
on a danger. The alliance with Dudley really seemed to set him facing
backward.

Colney might not have been under prompting of Nataly when he derided
Dudley; but Victor was at war with the picture of her, in her compression
of a cruel laugh, while her eyelids were hard shut, as if to exclude the
young patriarch of Philistines' ridiculous image.

He hearkened to the Nature interrogating him, why had he stepped on a
path to put division between himself and his beloved?--the smallest of
gaps; and still the very smallest between nuptial lovers is a
division--and that may become a mortal wound to their one-life. Why had
he roused a slumbering world? Glimpses of the world's nurse-like,
old-fashioned, mother-nightcap benevolence to its kicking favourites; its
long-suffering tolerance for the heroic breakers of its rough-cast laws,
while the decent curtain continues dropped, or lifted only ankle-high;
together with many scenes, lively suggestions, of the choice of ways he
liked best, told of things, which were better things, incomprehensibly
forfeited. So that the plain sense of value insisted on more than one
weighing of the gain in hand: a dubious measure.

He was as little disposed to reject it as to stop his course at a goal of
his aim. Nevertheless, a gain thus poorly estimated, could not command
him to do a deed of humiliation on account of it. The speaking to this
dry young Dudley was not imperative at present. A word would do in the
day to come.

Nataly was busy with her purchases of furn