benevolent writing abroad on these topics now: facts are more
looked at, and a good woman may join us in taking them without the
horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claim
distinction from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go through
adventures before she fixes, and be a creature of honest intentions.
Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did not
favour the girl's multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing with
facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say, Victor
recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for. And
now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the blue
butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor may
bring news.'

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps.'

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie
down after talking. She has a child's confidence in you.'

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular ejaculation
which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday. He resolved,
that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of his age; and he
went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of years should give
him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her was an ennobling
equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the active souls of the
world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She, the little Nesta, the
tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though she was, already in the
fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the simply Christian. The
worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was not of the order of young
women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary, consent to the peace with
evil, and are kept externally safe from the smirch of evil, and are the
ornaments of their country, glory of a country prizing ornaments higher
than qualities.

Dartrey could have been momentarily incredulous of things revealed by
Mrs. Marsett--not incredulous of the girl's heroism: that capacity he
caught and gauged in her shape of head, cut of mouth, and the
measurements he was accustomed to make at a glance:--but her beauty, or
the form of beauty which was hers, argued against her having set foot of
thought in our fens. Here and far there we meet a young saint vowed to
service along by those dismal swamps: and saintly she looks; not of this
earth. Nesta was