at or more
or anything, had actually set him thinking of the Insurance Office; which
he started to prosperity, and Fenellan in it, previously an untutored
rill of the mountains, if ever was one.

Useless to be dwelling on holiday pictures: Lakelands had hold of him!

Colney or somebody says, that the greater our successes, the greater the
slaves we become.--But we must have an aim, my friend, and success must
be the aim of any aim!--Yes, and, says Colney, you are to rejoice in the
disappointing miss, which saved you from being damned by your bullet on
the centre.--You're dead against Nature, old Colney.--That is to carry
the flag of Liberty.--By clipping a limb!

Victor overcame the Pessimist in his own royal cranium-Court. He
entertained a pronounced dissension with bachelors pretending to
independence. It could not be argued publicly, and the more the
pity:--for a slight encouragement, he would have done it: his outlook
over the waves of bachelors and (by present conditions mostly
constrained) spinsters--and another outlook, midnight upon Phlegethon to
the thoughts of men, made him deem it urgent. And it helped the plea in
his own excuse, as Colney pointed out to the son of Nature. That, he had
to admit, was true. He charged it upon Mrs. Burman, for twisting the most
unselfish and noblest of his thoughts; and he promised himself it was to
cease on the instant when the circumstance, which Nature was remiss in
not bringing about to-day or to-morrow, had come to pass. He could see
his Nataly's pained endurance beneath her habitual submission. Her effort
was a poor one, to conceal her dread of the day of the gathering at
Lakelands.

On the Sunday previous to the day, Dr. Themison accompanied the amateurs
by rail to Wrensham, to hear 'trial of the acoustics' of the
Concert-hall. They were a goodly company; and there was fun in the
railway-carriage over Colney's description of Fashionable London's vast
octopus Malady-monster, who was letting the doctor fly to the tether of
its longest filament for an hour, plying suckers on him the while. He had
the look, to general perception, of a man but half-escaped: and as when
the notes of things taken by the vision in front are being set down upon
tablets in the head behind. Victor observed his look at Nataly. The look
was like a door aswing, revealing in concealing. She was not or did not
appear struck by it; perhaps, if observant, she took it for a busy
professional gentleman's