repeat the
error of Crayc Farm and Creckholt. And here we have stout friends. Not to
speak of Beaver Urmsing: a picture of Old Christmas England! You took to
him?--must have taken to Beaver Urmsing! The Marigolds! And Sir Rodwell
and Lady Blachington are altogether above the mark of Sir Humphrey and
Lady Pottil, and those half and half Mountneys. There's a warm centre of
home in Lakelands. But I know my Nataly: she is thinking of our girl.
Here is the plan: we stand our ground: my dear soul won't forsake me only
there's the thought of Fredi, in the event . . . improbable enough. I
lift Fredi out of the atmosphere awhile; she goes to my cousins the
Duvidney ladies.'

Nataly was hit by a shot. 'Can you imagine it, Victor?'

'Regard it as done.'

'They will surely decline!'

'Their feeling for General Radnor is a worship.'

'All the more . . . ?'

'The son inherits it. He goes to them personally. Have you ever known me
personally fail? Fredi stays at Moorsedge for a month or two. Dorothea
and Virginia Duvidney will give her a taste of a new society; good for
the girl. All these little shiftings can be turned to good. Meantime, I
say, we stand our ground: but you are not to be worried; for though we
have gone too far to recede, we need not and we will not make the entry
into Lakelands until--you know: that is, auspiciously, to suit you in
every way. Thus I provide to meet contingencies. What one may really
fancy is, that the woman did but threaten. There's her point of view to
be considered: silly, crazy; but one sees it. We are not sure that she
struck a blow at Craye or Creckholt. I wonder she never wrote. She was
frightened, when she came to manage her property, of signing her name to
anything. Absurd, that sending of Jarniman! However, it's her move; we
make a corresponding disposition of our chessmen.'

'And I am to lose my Nesta for a month?' Nataly said, after catching here
and there at the fitful gleams of truce or comfort dropped from his
words. And simultaneously, the reproach of her mind to her nature for
again and so constantly yielding to the domination of his initiative:
unable to find the words, even the ideas, to withstand him,--brought big
tears. Angry at herself both for the internal feebleness and the
exhibition of it, she blinked and begged excuse. There might be nothing
that should call her to resist him. She could not do much worse than she
had done to-day. The reflection, that to-day she had