One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
regrets at the thought. Her girl’s heart would not be broken.
But if he so strongly loved her, as to hold to this engagement?
… It might then be worse. She dropped a plumb-line
into the young man, sounding him by what she knew of
him and judged. She had to revert to Nesta’s charm, for the
assurance of his anchored attachment.
Her holiday took the burden of her trouble, and amid the
beauty of a disenchanted scene, she resumed the London
incubus.
‘You told him of her being at the Wells? in the
neighbourhood, Victor?’
‘Didn’t you know, my dear, the family-seat is Cronidge, two
miles out from the Wells?—and particularly pretty country.’
‘I had forgotten, if I ever heard. You will not let him be in
ignorance?’
‘My dear love, you are pale about it. This is a matter between
men. I write, thanking for the honour and so forth;
and I appoint an interview; and I show him my tablets. He
must be told, necessarily. Incidents of this kind come in their
turn. If Dudley does not account himself the luckiest young
fellow in the kingdom, he’s not worthy of his good fortune.
I wish they were both here now, honeymooning among these
peaks, seeing the crescent over one, as we did last night!’
‘Have you an idea, in reading Nesta’s letter?’
‘Seems indifferent?—mere trick to hide the blushes. And
I, too, I’m interested in Delphica. Delphica and Falarique
will be fine stage business. Of course, Dr. Bouthoin and his
curate!—we know what Old England has to expect from
Colney.’
‘At any rate, Mr. Durance hurts no one. You will, in your
letter, appoint the day of the interview?’
‘Hurts himself! Yes, dearest; appoint for—ten days homeward—eleventh
day from to-day. And you to Fredi: a bit of
description—as you can, my Nataly! Happy to be a dolomite,
to be painted by Nataly’s pen.’
The sign is evil, when we have a vexatious ringing in the
ear of some small piece of familiar domestic chatter, and subject
it to scrutiny, hang on it, worry and magnify it. What
will not creatures under sway of the sensational life, catch at
to emphasize and strengthen distaste, until distaste shall have
a semblance of reason, in the period of the mind’s awakening
to revolt! Nataly shrank from the name of dolomite, de-
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