fessed
satirist like Colney Durance remark on the decorous manner of Dudley's
transparent courtship of the girl, under his look of an awakened
approval of himself, that he appeared to be asking everybody:--Do you
not think I bid fair for an excellent father of Philistines?--Victor had
a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley's dragging him bodily to be the
grandfather. Poor Fredi, too!--necessarily the mother: condemned by
her hard fate to feel proud of Philistine babies! Though women soon get
reconciled to it! Or do they? They did once. What if his Fredi turned
out one of the modern young women, who have drunk of ideas? He caught
himself speculating on that, as on a danger. The alliance with Dudley
really seemed to set him facing backward.

Colney might not have been under prompting of Nataly when he derided
Dudley; but Victor was at war with the picture of her, in her
compression of a cruel laugh, while her eyelids were hard shut, as if to
exclude the young patriarch of Philistines' ridiculous image.

He hearkened to the Nature interrogating him, why had he stepped on a
path to put division between himself and his beloved?--the smallest
of gaps; and still the very smallest between nuptial lovers is a
division--and that may become a mortal wound to their one-life. Why
had he roused a slumbering world? Glimpses of the world's nurse-like,
old-fashioned, mother-nightcap benevolence to its kicking favourites;
its long-suffering tolerance for the heroic breakers of its rough-cast
laws, while the decent curtain continues dropped, or lifted only
ankle-high; together with many scenes, lively suggestions, of the
choice of ways he liked best, told of things, which were better things,
incomprehensibly forfeited. So that the plain sense of value insisted on
more than one weighing of the gain in hand: a dubious measure.

He was as little disposed to reject it as to stop his course at a
goal of his aim. Nevertheless, a gain thus poorly estimated, could not
command him to do a deed of humiliation on account of it. The speaking
to this dry young Dudley was not imperative at present. A word would do
in the day to come.

Nataly was busy with her purchases of furniture, and the practise for
the great August Concert. He dealt her liberal encouragements, up to the
verge of Dr. Themison's latest hummed words touching Mrs. Burman, from
which he jumped in alarm lest he should paralyze her again: the dear
soul's dreaded aspect of an earthy