: she wanted throbs, visible
aims, the Christian incarnate; she would have preferred the tale of
slaughter--periodically invading all English classes as a flush from the
undrained lower, Vikings all--to frigid sterile Satire. And truly it is
not a fruit-bearing rod. Colney had to stand on the defence of it against
the damsel's charges. He thought the use of the rod, while expressing
profound regret at a difference of opinion between him and those noble
heathens, beneficial for boys; but in relation to their seniors, and
particularly for old gentlemen, he thought that the sharpest rod to cut
the skin was the sole saving of them. Insensibility to Satire, he likened
to the hard-mouthed horse; which is doomed to the worser thing in
consequence. And consequently upon the lack of it, and of training to
appreciate it, he described his country's male venerables as being
distinguishable from annuitant spinsters only in presenting themselves
forked.

'He is unsuccessful and embittered, Victor said to Nesta. 'Colney will
find in the end, that he has lost his game and soured himself by never
making concessions. Here's this absurd Serial--it fails, of course; and
then he has to say, it's because he won't tickle his English, won't enter
into a "frowzy complicity" with their tastes.'

'But--I think of Skepsey honest creatures respect Mr. Durance, and he is
always ready to help them,' said Nesta.

'If he can patronize.'

'Does he patronize me, dada?'

'You are one of his exceptions. Marry a title and live in state--and then
hear him! I am successful, and the result of it is, that he won't
acknowledge wisdom in anything I say or do; he will hardly acknowledge
the success. It is "a dirty road to success," he says. So that, if
successful, I must have rolled myself in mire. I compelled him to admit
he was wrong about your being received at Moorsedge: a bit of a triumph!'

Nesta's walks with her father were no loss of her to Nataly; the girl
came back to her bearing so fresh and so full a heart; and her father was
ever prouder of her: he presented new features of her in his quotations
of her sayings, thoughtful sayings. 'I declare she helps one to think,'
he said. 'It 's not precocity; it 's healthy inquiry. She brings me
nearer ideas of my own, not yet examined, than any one else does. I say,
what a wife for a man!'

'She takes my place beside you, dear, now I am not quite strong,' said
Nataly. 'You have not seen . . .?'

'Dudley