One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
stronger of those two: and another danger, that the vision of
the facts below the surface would discolour and disorder her
views of existence. But she loved, she sprang to, the lighted
world; and she had figures of male friends, to which to cling;
and they helped in animating glorious historical figures on
the world’s library-shelves or under yet palpitating earth.
Promise of a steady balance of her nature, too, was shown in
the absence of any irritable urgency to be doing, when her
bosom bled to help. Beyond the resolve, that she would not
abandon the woman who had made confession to her, she
formed no conscious resolutions. Far ahead down her journey
of the years to come, she did see muffled things she might
hope and would strive to do. They were chrysalis shapes.
Above all, she flew her blind quickened heart on the wings
of an imaginative force; and those of the young who can do
that, are in their blood incorruptible by dark knowledge,
irradiated under darkness in the mind. Let but the throb be
kept for others. That is the one secret, for redemption; if not
for preservation.
Victor descended on his marine London to embrace his
girl, full of regrets at Fredi’s absence from the great whirl
‘overhead,’ as places of multitudinous assembly, where he
shone, always appeared to him. But it was not to last long;
she would soon be on the surface again! At the first clasp of
her, he chirped some bars of her song. He challenged her to
duet before the good ladies, and she kindled, she was caught
up by his gaiety, wondering at herself; faintly aware of her
not being spontaneous. And she made her father laugh, just
in the old way; and looked at herself in his laughter, with the
thought, that she could not have become so changed; by
which the girl was helped to jump to her humour. Victor
turned his full front to Dorothea and Virginia, one sunny
beam of delight and although it was Mr. Stuart Rem who
was naughty Nesta’s victim, and although it seemed a trespass
on her part to speak in such a manner of a clerical gentleman,
they were seized; they were the opposite partners of a
laughing quadrille, lasting till they were tired out.
Victor had asked his girl, if she sang on a Sunday. The ladies
remembered, that she had put the question for permission to
Mr. Stuart Rem, who was opposed to secular singing.
‘And what did he say?’ said Victor.
Nesta shook her head: ‘It was not what he said, papa; it
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