e world through facts; that is to say, through the facts he
encountered: and he was in consequence foredoomed to a succession of
bumps; all the heavier from his being, unlike the horned kind, not
unimpressible by the hazy things outside his experience. Even at his
darkest over Nesta, it was his indigestion of the misconduct of her
parents, which denied to a certain still small advocate within him
the right to raise a voice: that good fellow struck the attitude
for pleading, and had to be silent; for he was Instinct; at best a
stammering speaker in the Court of the wigged Facts. Instinct of this
Nesta Radnor's character would have said a brave word, but for her
deeds bearing witness to her inheritance of a lawlessly adventurous
temperament.

What to do? He was no nearer to an answer when the wintry dusk had
fallen on the promenading crowds. To do nothing, is the wisdom of those
who have seen fools perish. Facts had not taught him, that the doing
nothing, for a length of days after the first shock he sustained, was
the reason of how it came that Nesta knitted closer her acquaintance
with the 'agreeable lady' she mentioned in her letter to Cronidge. Those
excellent counsellors of a mercantile community gave him no warnings,
that the 'masterly inactive' part, so greatly esteemed by him for the
conduct of public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid
girl: nor a hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the
sensations are as violent as hysterical females to block them from the
understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable
at a crux of his meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers
waved faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. Superb for the
chances: but what of her offspring? And the other was a girl such as
the lusty Dame Dowager of fighting ancestors would have signalled to the
heir of the House's honours for the perpetuation of his race. No doubt:
and the venerable Dame (beautiful in her old-lace frame, or say foliage)
of the Ages backward, temp: Ed: III. inflated him with a thought of
her: and his readings in modern books on heredity, pure blood, physical
regeneration, pronounced approval of Nesta Radnor: and thereupon
instinct opened mouth to speak; and a lockjaw seized it under that scowl
of his presiding mistrust of Nature.

He clung to his mistrust the more because of a warning he had from the
silenced natural voice: somewhat as we may behold h