One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
she ceased speaking, the wrinkles of a shiver went over her,
and the tone was of tears coming, but she locked them in.
‘An accident!’ said Victor; ‘some misunderstanding—there
can’t be harm. Of course, she promises—hasn’t to promise.
How could a girl distinguish! He does not cast blame on
her?’
‘Dear, if you would go down to Dartrey to-morrow. He
knows:—it is over the Clubs there; he will tell you, before a
word to Nesta. Innocent, yes! Mr. Sowerby has not to be
assured of that. Ignorant of the character of the dreadful
woman? Ah, if I could ever in anything think her ignorant!
She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does me
justice. My duty to her—I must defend myself—has been
my first thought. I said in my prayers—she at least! … We
have to see the more than common reasons why she, of all
girls, should—he did not hint it, he was delicate: her name
must not be public.’
‘Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,’ said
Victor. ‘It does not suit me to hear the word “indulgent.”
My dear, if you were down there, you would discover that
the talk was the talk of two or three men seeing our girl ride
by—and she did ride with a troop: why, we’ve watched them
along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened! I’ll go
down early to-morrow.’
He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance,
there was the gain of her being won to favour
Dudley’s hitherto but tolerated suit.
Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her
anguish, was a moderation of it. She was kept strung to confide
in her girl by the recent indebtedness to her for words
heavenly in the strengthening comfort they gave. But no
sooner was she alone than her torturing perplexities and her
abasement of the hours previous to Victor’s coming returned.
For a girl of Nesta’s head could not be deceived; she had
come home with a woman’s intelligence of the world, hard
knowledge of it—a knowledge drawn from foul wells, the
unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe to the depth
of it. She had in her wounded breast the world’s idea, that
corruption must come of the contact with impurity.
Nataly renewed her cry of despair: ‘The mother!—the
daughter!’—her sole revelation of the heart’s hollows in her
stammered speaking to Victor.
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