the
spectacle of tears than have heard that toneless voice, as it were the
dry torrent-bed rolling blocks instead of melodious, if afflicting,
waters.

He told Nesta not to disturb her mother, and murmured of a headache:
'Though, upon my word, the best cure for mama would be a look into
Fredi's eyes!' he said, embracing his girl, quite believing in her, just
a little afraid of her.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. NATALY, NESTA, AND DARTREY FENELLAN

Pleasant things, that come to us too late for our savour of the
sweetness in them, toll ominously of life on the last walk to its end.
Yesterday, before Dudley Sowerby's visit, Nataly would have been stirred
where the tears we shed for happiness or repress at a flattery dwell
when seeing her friend Mrs. John Cormyn enter her boudoir and hearing
her speak repentantly, most tenderly. Mrs. John said: 'You will believe
I have suffered, dear; I am half my weight, I do think': and she did not
set the smile of responsive humour moving; although these two ladies had
a key of laughter between them. Nataly took her kiss; held her hand, and
at the parting kissed her. She would rather have seen her friend than
not: so far she differed from a corpse; but she was near the likeness to
the dead in the insensibility to any change of light shining on one who
best loved darkness and silence. She cried to herself wilfully, that
her pride was broken: as women do when they spurn at the wounding of
a dignity they cannot protect and die to see bleeding; for in it they
live.

The cry came of her pride unbroken, sore bruised, and after a certain
space for recovery combative. She said:

Any expiation I could offer where I did injury, I would not refuse; I
would humble myself and bless heaven for being able to pay my debt--what
I can of it. All I contend against is, injustice. And she sank into
sensational protests of her anxious care of her daughter, too proud to
phrase them.

Her one great affliction, the scourging affliction of her utter
loneliness;--an outcast from her family; daily, and she knew not
how, more shut away from the man she loved; now shut away from her
girl;--seemed under the hand of the angel of God. The abandonment of her
by friends, was merely the light to show it.

Midday's post brought her a letter from Priscilla Graves, entreating
to be allowed to call on her next day.--We are not so easily cast off!
Nataly said, bitterly, in relation to the lady whose offending had not
been