arily misjudged him
for a man impelled by the vanity of literary point and finish, when
indeed it was hot satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a
class to extract a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the
country, mankind as well. Nataly wanted a picture painted, colours and
details, that she might get a vision of the scene at Moorsedge. She did
her best to feel an omen and sound it, in his question 'whether the
yearly increasing army of the orderly annuitants and their parasites does
not demonstrate the proud old country as a sheath for pith rather than of
the vital run of sap.'

Perhaps it was patriotic to inquire; and doubtless she was the weakest of
women; she could follow no thought; her heart was beating blindly beside
Victor, hopeing for the refusal painful to her through his
disappointment.

'You think me foolish,' she made answer to one of Colney's shrugs; 'and
it has come to that pitch with me, that I cannot be sensible of a merit
except in being one with him--obeying, is the word. And I have never yet
known him fail. That terrible Lakelands wears a different look to me,
when I think of what he can do; though I would give half my days to
escape it.'

She harped on the chord of feverish extravagance; the more hateful to
Colney because of his perceiving, that she simulated a blind devotedness
to stupefy her natural pride; and he was divided between stamping on her
for an imbecile and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation
rendered her pitiable. 'You will learn tomorrow what Victor has done,' he
said, and thought how the simple words carried the bitterness.

That was uttered within a few minutes of midnight, when the ladies of
Moorsedge themselves, after an exhausting resistance to their dearest
relative, were at the hall-door of the house with Victor, saying the
good-night, to which he responded hurriedly, cordially, dumbly, a baffled
man. They clasped hands. Miss Dorothea said:

'You, Victor, always.' Miss Virginia said: 'You will be sure of welcome.'
He walked out upon the moonless night; and for lack of any rounded object
in the smothering darkness to look at, he could nowhere take moorings to
gather himself together and define the man who had undergone so
portentous a defeat. He was glad of quarters at an hotel, a solitary bed,
absence from his Nataly.

For their parts, the ladies were not less shattered. They had no triumph
in their victory: the weight of it bore them d