One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
standing: and she had her intimations of the world’s wisdom
in withholding contagious presences from the very mangy
of the young, who may not have an, aim, or ideal or strong
human compassion, for a preservative. She was assured of
her possessing it. She asked herself in her mother’s voice,
and answered mutely. She had the certainty: for she rebuked
the slavish feverishness of the passion, as betrayed by Mrs.
Marsett; and the woman’s tone, as of strung wires ringing on
a rage of the wind. Then followed her cry for the man who
could speak to Captain Marsett of his duty in honour. An
image of one, accompanying the faster beats of her heart,
beguiled her to think away from the cause. He, the one man
known to her, would act the brother’s part on behalf of the
hapless creature.
Nesta just imagined her having supplicated him, and at
once imagination came to dust. She had to thank him she
knelt to him. For the first time of her life she found herself
seized with her sex’s shudder in the blood.
CHAPTER XXXV
IN WHICH AGAIN WE MAKE USE OF THE
OLD LAMPS FOR LIGHTING AN ABYSMAL
DARKNESS
AND IF NESTA had looked out of her carriage-window soon
after the train began to glide, her eagle of imagination would
have reeled from the heights, with very different feelings,
earlier, perhaps a captive, at sight of the tardy gentleman
rushing along the platform, and bending ear to the footman
Perrin, and staring for one lost.
The snaky tail of the train imparted to Dudley an apprehension
of the ominous in his having missed her. It wound
away, and left regrets, which raised a chorus of harsh congratulations
from the opposite party of his internal parliament.
Neither party could express an opinion without rousing
the other to an uproar.
He had met his cousin Southweare overnight. He had
heard, that there was talk of Miss Radnor. Her name was in
the mouth of Major Worrell. It was coupled with the name
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