for the golden beams which his generosity cast about her. But she had an
intelligence sharp to pierce, virgin though she was; and with the mark in
sight, however distant, she struck it, unerring as an Artemis for blood
of beasts: those shrewd young wits, on the lookout to find a champion,
athirst for help upon a desolate road, were hard as any judicial to
pronounce the sentence upon Dudley in that respect. She raised him high;
she placed herself low; she had a glimpse of the struggle he had gone
through; love of her had helped him, she believed. And she was melted;
and not the less did the girl's implacable intuition read with the
keenness of eye of a man of the world the blunt division in him, where
warm humanity stopped short at the wall of social concrete forming a part
of this rightly esteemed young citizen. She, too, was divided: she was at
his feet; and she rebuked herself for daring to judge--or rather, it was,
for having a reserve in her mind upon a man proving so generous with her.
She was pulled this way and that by sensibilities both inspiring to blind
gratitude and quickening her penetrative view. The certainty of an
unerring perception remained.

Dorothea and Virginia were seated in the room below, waiting for their
carriage, when the hall-door spoke of the Hon. Dudley's departure; soon
after, Nesta entered to them. She swam up to Dorothea's lap, and dropped
her head on it, kneeling.

The ladies feared she might be weeping. Dorothea patted her thick brown
twisted locks of hair. Unhappiness following such an interview, struck
them as an ill sign.

Virginia bent to the girl's ear, and murmured: 'All well?'

She replied: 'He has been very generous.'

Her speaking of the words renewed an oppression, that had darkened her on
the descent of stairs. For sensibilities sharp as Nesta's, are not to be
had without their penalties: and she who had gone nigh to summing in a
flash the nature of Dudley, sank suddenly under that affliction often
besetting the young adventurous mind, crushing to young women:--the
fascination exercised upon them by a positive adverse masculine attitude
and opinion. Young men know well what it is: and if young women have by
chance overcome their timidity, to the taking of any step out of the trim
pathway, they shrink, with a sense of forlornest isolation. It becomes a
subjugation; inciting to revolt, but a heavy weight to cast off. Soon it
assumed its material form for the contention bet