her dear old
silly mother's pathos whimpered it, of the separation for a month! and
he smiled and hummed pleasantly at any small petition, thinking her in
error to expect Dartrey's return to town before the close of a week; and
then wondering at women, mildly denouncing in his heart the mothers who
ran risk of disturbing their daughters' bosoms with regard to particular
heroes married or not. Dartrey attracted women: he was one of the men
who do it without effort. Victor's provident mind blamed the mother for
the indiscreetness of her wish to have him among them. But Dudley had
been making way bravely of late; he improved; he began to bloom, like a
Spring flower of the garden protected from frosts under glass; and Fredi
was the sheltering and nourishing bestower of the lessons. One could
see, his questions and other little points revealed, that he had a
certain lover's dread of Dartrey Fenellan; a sort of jealousy: Victor
understood the feeling. To love a girl, who has her ideal of a man
elsewhere in another; though she may know she never can wed the man, and
has not the hope of it; is torment to the lover quailing, as we do in
this terrible season of the priceless deliciousness, stripped against
all the winds that blow; skinless at times. One gets up a sympathy for
the poor shy dependent shivering lover. Nevertheless, here was young
Dudley waking, visibly becoming bolder. As in the flute-duets, he gained
fire from concert. The distance between Cronidge and Moorsedge was two
miles and a quarter.

Instead of the delay of a whole week, Victor granted four days, which
embraced a musical evening at Mrs. John Cormyn's on the last of the
days, when Nesta was engaged to sing with her mother a duet of her own
composition, the first public fruit of her lessons in counterpoint from
rigid Herr Strauscher, who had said what he had said, in letting it
pass: eulogy, coming from him. So Victor heard, and he doated am the
surprise to come for him, in a boyish anticipation. The girl's little
French ballads under tutelage of Louise de Seilles promised, though they
were imitative. If Strauscher let this pass... Victor saw Grand Opera
somewhere to follow; England's claim to be a creative musical nation
vindicated; and the genius of the fair sex as well.

He heard the duet at Mrs. Cormyn's; and he imagined a hearing of
his Fredi's Opera, and her godmother's delight in it; the once famed
Sanfredini's consent to be the diva at a rehearsal,