ready for the post. He talked of
public affairs, was humorous over any extravagance or eccentricity
in the views he took; notably when he alluded to his envy of little
Skepsey. He said he really did envy; and his daughter believed it and
saw fair prospects in it.

Her grateful reply to the young earl conveyed all that was perforce
ungentle, in the signature of the name of Nesta Victoria Fenellan:--a
name he was to hear cited among the cushioned conservatives, and plead
for as he best could under a pressure of disapprobation, and compelled
esteem, and regrets.

The day following the report of her father's wish to see her, she and
her husband started for England. On that day, Victor breathed his last.
Dudley had seen the not hopeful but an ominous illumination of the
stricken man; for whom came the peace his Nataly had in earth. Often did
Nesta conjure up to vision the palpitating form of the beloved mother
with her hand at her mortal wound in secret through long years of the
wearing of the mask to keep her mate inspirited. Her gathered knowledge
of things and her ruthless penetrativeness made it sometimes hard for
her to be tolerant of a world, whose tolerance of the infinitely evil
stamped blotches on its face and shrieked in stains across the skin
beneath its gallant garb. That was only when she thought of it as the
world condemning her mother. She had a husband able and ready, in return
for corrections of his demon temper, to trim an ardent young woman's
fanatical overflow of the sisterly sentiments; scholarly friends, too,
for such restrainings from excess as the mind obtains in a lamp
of History exhibiting man's original sprouts to growth and fitful
continuation of them. Her first experience of the grief that is
in pleasure, for those who have passed a season, was when the old
Concert-set assembled round her. When she heard from the mouth of
a living woman, that she had saved her from going under the world's
waggon-wheels, and taught her to know what is actually meant by the good
living of a shapely life, Nesta had the taste of a harvest happiness
richer than her recollection of the bride's, though never was bride in
fuller flower to her lord than she who brought the dower of an equal
valiancy to Dartrey Fenellan. You are aware of the reasons, the many,
why a courageous young woman requires of high heaven, far more than the
commendably timid, a doughty husband. She had him; otherwise would that
puzzled old world,