One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
the individual. No sting of the sort had bothered him, he
called to mind, on board the Channel boat-nothing to speak
of. ‘Why does she come here! Why didn’t she go to her husband!
She gets into the City scramble blindfold, and catches
at the nearest hand to help her out! Nice woman enough.’
Yes, but he was annoyed with her for springing sensations
that ran altogether heartless to the object, at the same time
that they were disloyal to the dear woman their natural divinity.
And between him and that dear woman, since the
communication made by Skepsey in the town of Dreux,
nightly the dividing spirit of Mrs. Burman lay cold as a corpse.
They both felt her there. They kissed coldly, pressed a hand,
said good night.
Next afternoon the announcement by Skepsey of the Hon.
Dudley Sowerby, surprised Victor’s eyebrows at least, and
caused him genially to review the visit of Lady Grace.
Whether or not Colney Durance drew his description of a
sunken nobility from the ‘sick falcon’ distinguishing the handsome
features of Mr. Sowerby, that beaked invalid was particularly
noticeable to Victor during the statement of his case,
although the young gentleman was far from being one, in
Colney’s words, to enliven the condition of domestic fowl with
an hereditary turn for ‘preying’; eminently the reverse; he was
of good moral repute, a worker, a commendable citizen. But
there was the obligation upon him to speak—it is expected in
such cases, if only as a formality—of his ‘love’: hard to do even
in view and near to the damsel’s reddening cheeks: it perplexed
him. He dropped a veil on the bashful topic; his tone was the
same as when he reverted to the material points; his present
income, his position in the great Bank of Shotts and Co., his
prospects, the health of the heir to the Cantor earldom. He
considered that he spoke to a member of the City merchants,
whose preference for the plain positive, upon the question of
an alliance between families by marriage, lends them for once
a resemblance to lords. When a person is not read by character,
the position or profession is called on to supply raised
print for the finger-ends to spell.
Hard on poor Fredi! was Victor’s thought behind the smile
he bent on this bald Cupid. She deserved a more poetical
lover! His paternal sympathies for the girl besought in love,
revived his past feelings as a wooer; nothing but a dread of
the influence of Mr. Barmby’s toned eloquence upon the
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