petite? Here was Fredi, his
little Fredi--stately girl that she had grown, and grave, too, for all
her fun and her sail on wings--lifting him to pleasures not followed
by clamorous, and perfectly satisfactory, yet discomposingly violent,
appeals to Nature. They could be vindicated. Or could they, when they
would not bear a statement of the case? He could not imagine himself
stating it namelessly to his closest friend--not to Simeon Fenellan. As
for speaking to Dartrey, the notion took him with shivers:--Young Dudley
would have seemed a more possible confidant:--and he represented the
Puritan world.--And young Dudley was getting over Fredi's infatuation
for the woman she had rescued: he was beginning to fancy he saw a right
enthusiasm in it;--in the abstract; if only the fair maid would drop
an unseemly acquaintance. He had called at the office to say so. Victor
stammered the plea for him.

'Never, dear father,' came the smooth answer: a shocking answer in
contrast with the tones. Her English was as lucid as her eyes when she
continued up to the shock she dealt: 'Do not encourage a good man to
waste his thoughts upon me. I have chosen my mate, and I may never marry
him. I do not know whether he would marry me. He has my soul. I have no
shame in saying I love him. It is to love goodness, greatness of heart.
He is a respecter of women--of all women; not only the fortunate. He is
the friend of the weaker everywhere. He has been proved in fire. He does
not sentimentalize over poor women, as we know who scorns people for
doing:--and that is better than hardness, meaning kindly. He is not one
of the unwise advocates. He measures the forces against them. He reads
their breasts. He likes me. He is with me in my plans. He has not said,
has not shown, he loves me. It is too high a thought for me until I hear
it.'

'Has your soul!' was all that Victor could reply, while the whole
conception of Lakelands quaked under the crumbling structure.

Remonstrance, argument, a word for Dudley, swelled to his lips and sank
in dumbness. Her seeming intuition--if it was not a perception--of
the point where submission to the moods of his nature had weakened his
character, and required her defence of him, struck Victor with a serious
fear of his girl: and it was the more illuminatingly damnatory for being
recognized as the sentiment which no father should feel. He tried to
think she ought not to be so wise of the things of the world. An effort