One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
‘Hardly for that!’
‘By-and-by, then.’
‘Though I could not say Mr. Fenellan.’
‘You see; Dartrey, it must be.’
‘If I could!’
‘But the fellow is not a captain: and he is a friend, an old
friend, very old friend: he’ll be tipped with grey in a year or
two.’
‘I might be bolder then.’
‘Imagine it now. There is no disloyalty in your calling your
friends by their names.’
Her nature rang to the implication. ‘I am not bound.’
Dartrey hung fast, speculating on her visibly: ‘I heard you
were?’
‘No. I must be free.’
‘It is not an engagement?’
‘Will you laugh?—I have never quite known. My father
desired it: and my desire is to please him. I think I am vain
enough to think I read through blinds and shutters. The
engagement—what there was—has been, to my reading,
broken more than once. I have not considered it, to settle
my thoughts on it, until lately: and now I may suspect it to
be broken. I have given cause—if it is known. There is no
blame elsewhere. I am not unhappy, Captain Dartrey.’
‘Captain by courtesy. Very well. Tell me how Nesta judges
the engagement to be broken?’
She was mentally phrasing before she said: ‘Absence.’
‘He was here yesterday.’
All that the visit embraced was in her expressive look, as of
sight drawing inward, like our breath in a spell of wonderment.
‘Then I understand; it enlightens me.
My own mother!—my poor mother! he should have come
to me. I was the guilty person, not she; and she is the sufferer.
That, if in life were direct retribution! but the very
meaning of having a heart, is to suffer through others or for
them.’
‘You have soon seen that, dear girl,’ said Dartrey.
‘So, my own mother, and loving me as she does, blames
me!’ Nesta sighed; she took a sharp breath. ‘You? do you
blame me too?’
He pressed her hand, enamoured of her instantaneous divination
and heavenly candour.
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