uise. And it was now to be from her mother as well: she felt the pain
when kissing her mother in bed. But this was moderated by the prospect
of a holiday away out of reach of Mr. Barmby's pursuing voice, whom her
mother favoured: and her mother was concealing something from her;
so she could not make the confidante of her mother. Nataly had no
forewarnings. Her simple regrets filled her bosom. All night she had
been taking her chastisement, and in the morning it seemed good to her,
that she should be denuded, for her girl to learn the felicity of having
relatives.

For some reason, over which Nataly mused in the succeeding hours, the
girl had not spoken of any visit her mother was to pay to the Duvidney
ladies or they to her. Latterly she had not alluded to her mother's
family. It might mean, that the beloved and dreaded was laying finger
on a dark thing in the dark; reading syllables by touch; keeping silence
over the communications to a mind not yet actively speculative, as it is
a way with young women. 'With young women educated for the market, to
be timorous, consequently secretive, rather snaky,' Colney Durance had
said. Her Nesta was not one of the 'framed and glazed' description,
cited by him, for an example of the triumph of the product; 'exactly
harmonious with the ninny male's ideal of female innocence.' No; but
what if the mother had opened her heart to her girl? It had been of late
her wish or a dream, shaping hourly to a design, now positively to go
through that furnace. Her knowledge of Victor's objection, restrained
an impulse that had not won spring enough to act against his counsel or
vivify an intelligence grown dull in slavery under him, with regard
to the one seeming right course. The adoption of it would have wounded
him--therefore her. She had thought of him first; she had also thought
of herself, and she blamed herself now. She went so far as to think,
that Victor was guilty of the schemer's error of counting human
creatures arithmetically, in the sum, without the estimate of
distinctive qualities and value here and there. His return to a
shivering sensitiveness on the subject of his girl's enlightenment
'just yet,' for which Nataly pitied and loved him, sharing it, with
humiliation for doing so, became finally her excuse. We must have some
excuse, if we would keep to life.

Skepsey's case appeared in the evening papers. He confessed, 'frankly,'
he said, to the magistrate, that, 'acting under tem