e had done for Victor,
and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed.
To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the
devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort. Dartrey sat
rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap. Nesta looked at Louise
when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father: It was
Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face. Apparently he was not
intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect. Dartrey
quitted the box. Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right
and left. He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not
return.

Nesta felt her father's absence as light gone: his eyes rayed light.
Besides she had the anticipation of a speech from him, that would win
Matilda Pridden. She fancied Simeon Fenellan to be rather under the spell
of the hilarity he roused. A gentleman behind him spoke in his ear; and
Simeon, instead of ceasing, resumed his flow. Matilda Pridden's gaze on
him and the people was painful to behold: Nesta saw her mind. She set
herself to study a popular assembly. It could be serious to the call of
better leadership, she believed. Her father had been telling her of late
of a faith he had in the English, that they (or so her intelligence
translated his remarks) had power to rise to spiritual ascendancy, and be
once more the Islanders heading the world of a new epoch abjuring
materialism--some such idea; very quickening to her, as it would be to
this earnest young woman worshipped by Skepsey. Her father's absence and
the continued shouts of laughter, the insatiable thirst for fun, darkened
her in her desire to have the soul of the good working sister refreshed.
They had talked together; not much: enough for each to see at either's
breast the wells from the founts of life.

The box-door opened, Dartrey came in. He took her hand. She stood-up to
his look. He said to Matilda Pridden: 'Come with us; she will need you.'

'Speak it,' said Nesta.

He said to the other: 'She has courage.'

'I could trust to her,' Matilda Pridden replied.

Nesta read his eyes. 'Mother?'

His answer was in the pressure.

'Ill?'

'No longer.'

'Oh! Dartrey.' Matilda Pridden caught her fast.

'I can walk, dear,' Nesta said.

Dartrey mentioned her father.

She understood: 'I am thinking of him.'

The words of her mother: 'At peace whe