the application of the Rev. Septimus Barmby to Mr. Victor
Radnor, that he might enter the house in the guise of suitor for
the hand of Nesta Victoria. It is the excelling merit of similes and
metaphors to spring us to vault over gaps and thickets and dreary
places. But, as with the visits of Immortals, we must be ready to
receive them. Beware, moreover, of examining them too scrupulously:
they have a trick of wearing to vapour if closely scanned. Let it be
gratefully for their aid.

So far the comparison is absolute, that Mr. Barmby passed: he was at
liberty to pursue his quest.

Victor could not explain how he had been brought to grant it. He was at
pains to conceal the bewilderment Mr. Barmby had cast on him, and make
Nataly see the smallness of the grant:--both of them were unwilling to
lose Barmby; there was not the slightest fear about Fredi, he said;
and why should not poor Barmby have his chance with the others in the
race!--and his Nataly knew that he hated to speak unkindly: he could cry
the negative like a crack of thunder in the City. But such matters as
these! and a man pleading merely for the right to see the girl!--and
pleading in a tone... 'I assure you, my love, he touched chords.'

'Did he allude to advantages in the alliance with him?' Nataly asked
smoothly.

'His passion--nothing else. Candid enough. And he had a tone--he has
a tone, you know. It 's not what he said. Some allusion to belief in a
favourable opinion of him... encouragement... on the part of the mama.
She would have him travelling with us! I foresaw it.'

'You were astonished when it came.'

'We always are.'

Victor taunted her softly with having encouraged Mr. Barmby.

She had thought in her heart--not seriously; on a sigh of
despondency--that Mr. Barmby espousing the girl would smooth a troubled
prospect: and a present resentment at her weakness rendered her shrewd
to detect Victor's cunning to cover his own: a thing imaginable of him
previously in sentimental matters, yet never accurately and so legibly
printed on her mind. It did not draw her to read him with a novel
familiarity; it drew her to be more sensible of foregone intimations of
the man he was--irresistible in attack, not impregnably defensive. Nor
did he seem in this instance humanely considerate: if mademoiselle's
estimate of the mind of the girl was not wrong, then Mr. Barmby's
position would be both a ridiculous and a cruel one. She had some silly
final idea t