et a glimpse of the fray.

Free, and rejoicing; without the wish to be free; at the same time
humbly and sadly acquiescing in the stronger claim of his family
to pronounce the decision: such was the second stage of Dudley's
perturbation after the blow. A letter of Nesta's writing was in his
pocket: he knew her address. He could not reply to her until he had seen
her father: and that interview remained necessarily prospective until he
had come to his exact resolve, not omitting his critical approval of the
sentences giving it shape, stamp, dignity--a noble's crest, as it were.

Nesta wrote briefly. The apostrophe was, 'Dear Mr. Sowerby.' She
had engaged to send her address. Her father had just gone. The Miss
Duvidneys had left the hotel yesterday for the furnished house facing
the sea. According to arrangements, she had a livery-stable hack, and
had that morning trotted out to the downs with a riding-master and
company, one of whom was 'an agreeable lady.'

He noticed approvingly her avoidance of an allusion to the 'Delphica' of
Mr. Durance's incomprehensible serial story, or whatever it was; which,
as he had shown her, annoyed him, for its being neither fact nor fun;
and she had insisted on the fun; and he had painfully tried to see it
or anything of a meaning; and it seemed to him now, that he had been
humiliated by the obedience to her lead: she had offended by her harping
upon Delphica. However, here it was unmentioned. He held the letter out
to seize it in the large, entire.

Her handwriting was good, as good as the writing of the most agreeable
lady on earth. Dudley did not blame her for letting the lady be deceived
in her--if she knew her position. She might be ignorant of it. And to
strangers, to chance acquaintances, even to friends, the position, of
the loathsome name, was not materially important. Marriage altered the
view. He sided with his family.

He sided, edgeing away, against his family. But a vision of the earldom
coming to him, stirred reverential objections, composed of all which
his unstained family could protest in religion, to repudiate an alliance
with a stained house, and the guilty of a condonation of immorality. Who
would have imagined Mr. Radnor a private sinner flaunting for one of the
righteous? And she, the mother, a lady--quite a lady; having really
a sense of duty, sense of honour! That she must be a lady, Dudley
was convinced. He beheld through a porous crape, woven of formal
respec