oud
in a ragged hoarseness, very strangely: Every thought of mine now has a
physical effect on me!

They had not been two minutes together when she descended to them. Yet
she saw the girl's heart brimming, either with some word spoken to
her or for joy of an unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked,
without distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly
another drop in Nesta's foolish happy cup. Could it be all because
Dartrey Fenellan countenanced her acquaintance with that woman? The
mother had lost hold of her. The tortured mother had lost hold of
herself.

Dartrey in the course of the evening, begged to hear the contralto; and
Nataly, refusing, was astounded by the admission in her blank mind of
the truth of man's list of charges against her sex, starting from their
capriciousness for she could have sung in a crowded room, and she had
now a desire for company, for stolid company or giddy, an ocean of it.
This led to her thinking, that the world of serious money-getters,
and feasts, and the dance, the luxurious displays, and the reverential
Sunday service, will always ultimately prove itself right in opposition
to critics and rebels, and to any one vainly trying to stand alone: and
the thought annihilated her; for she was past the age of the beginning
again, and no footing was left for an outsider not self-justified in
being where she stood. She heard Dartrey's praise of Nesta's voice for
tearing her mother's bosom with notes of intolerable sweetness; and it
was haphazard irony, no doubt; we do not the less bleed for the accident
of a shot.

At last, after midnight Victor arrived.

Nesta most impudently expected to be allowed to remain. 'Pray, go,
dear,' her mother said. Victor kissed his Fredi. 'Some time to-morrow,'
said he; and she forbore to beseech him.

He stared, though mildly, at sight of her taking Dartrey's hand for the
good-night and deliberately putting her lips to it.

Was she a girl whose notion of rectifying one wrong thing done, was to
do another? Nataly could merely observe. A voice pertaining to no
one present, said in her ear:--Mothers have publicly slapped their
daughter's faces for less than that!--It was the voice of her incapacity
to cope with the girl. She watched Nesta's passage from the room,
somewhat affected by the simple bearing for which she was reproaching
her.

'And our poor darling has not seen a mountain this year!' Victor
exclaimed, to have mentio