its part, and music was impressed--the innocent Concerts; his
wealth, all his inventiveness were to serve;--and merely to attract
and win the tastes of people, for a social support to Lakelands! Merely
that? Much more:--if Nataly's coldness to the place would but allow him
to form an estimate of how much. At the same time, being in the grasp of
his present disappointment, he perceived a meanness in the result,
that was astonishing and afflicting. He had not ever previously felt
imagination starving at the vision of success. Victor had yet to learn,
that the man with a material object in aim, is the man of his object;
and the nearer to his mark, often the farther is he from a sober self;
he is more the arrow of his bow than bow to his arrow. This we pay for
scheming: and success is costly; we find we have pledged the better half
of ourselves to clutch it; not to be redeemed with the whole handful of
our prize! He was, however, learning after his leaping fashion. Nataly's
defective sympathy made him look at things through the feelings she
depressed. A shadow of his missed Idea on London Bridge seemed to cross
him from the close flapping of a wing within reach. He could say only,
that it would, if caught, have been an answer to the thought disturbing
him.

Nataly drew Colney Durance with her eyes to step beside her, on the
descent to the terrace. Little Skepsey hove in sight, coming swift as
the point of an outrigger over the flood.

CHAPTER X. SKEPSEY IN MOTION

The bearer of his master's midday letters from London shot beyond
Nataly as soon as seen, with an apparent snap of his body in passing. He
steamed to the end of the terrace and delivered the packet, returning
at the same rate of speed, to do proper homage to the lady he so much
respected. He had left the railway-station on foot instead of taking a
fly, because of a calculation that he would save three minutes; which
he had not lost for having to come through the raincloud. 'Perhaps the
contrary,' Skepsey said: it might be judged to have accelerated his
course: and his hat dripped, and his coat shone, and he soaped his
hands, cheerful as an ouzel-cock when the sun is out again.

'Many cracked crowns lately, in the Manly Art?' Colney inquired of him.
And Skepsey answered with precision of statement: 'Crowns, no, sir; the
nose, it may happen; but it cannot be said to be the rule.'

'You are of opinion, that the practice of Scientific Pugilism offers us
co