One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
In ascribing them to a weariness at Fenellan’s perpetual acquiescence,
he put the cover on them, and he stamped it
with a repudiation of the charge, that Colney’s views upon
the great Marriage Question were the ‘very hee-haw of nonsense.’
They were not the hee-haw; in fact, viewing the host
of marriages, they were for discussion; there was no bray
about them. He could not feel them to be absurd while Mrs.
Burman’s tenure of existence barred the ceremony. Anything
for a phrase! he murmured of Fenellan’s talk; calling him,
Dear old boy, to soften the slight.
Nataly had not seen Fenellan or heard from Dartrey; so
she continued to be uninformed of her hero’s release; and
that was in the order of happy accidents. She had hardly to
look her interrogation for the news; it radiated. But he stated
such matter-of-course briefly. ‘The good ladies are ready to
receive our girl.’
Her chagrin resolved to a kind of solace of her draggled
pride, in the idea, that he who tamed everybody to submission,
might well have command of her.
The note, signed D. and V., was shown.
There stood the words. And last night she had been partly
of the opinion of Colney Durance. She sank down among
the unreasoning abject;—not this time with her perfect love
of him, but with a resistance and a dubiety under compression.
For she had not quite comprehended why Nesta should
go. This readiness of the Duvidney ladies to receive the girl,
stopped her mental inquiries.
She begged for a week’s delay; ‘before the parting’; as her
dear old silly mother’s pathos whimpered it, of the separation
for a month! and he smiled and hummed pleasantly at
any small petition, thinking her in error to expect Dartrey’s
return to town before the close of a week; and then wondering
at women, mildly denouncing in his heart the mothers
who ran risk of disturbing their daughters’ bosoms with regard
to particular heroes married or not. Dartrey attracted
women: he was one of the men who do it without effort.
Victor’s provident mind blamed the mother for the indiscreetness
of her wish to have him among them. But Dudley
had been making way bravely of late; he improved; he began
to bloom, like a Spring flower of the garden protected from
frosts under glass; and Fredi was the sheltering and nourishing
bestower of the lessons. One could see, his questions and
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