One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
Pass the deficiency in a man. But a girl who could speak, by
allusion, of Mrs. Marsett—of the existence of a Mrs.
Marsett—in the presence of a man: and he excusing, encouraging:
and this girl her own girl;—it seemed to her, that
the world reeled; she could hardly acknowledge the girl; save
under the penitential admission of her sin’s having found
her out.
She sent Nesta to her room when they went upstairs to
dress, unable to endure her presence after seeing her show a
placid satisfaction at Dartrey’s nod to the request for him to
sleep in the house that night. It was not at all a gleam of
pleasure, hardly an expression; it was a manner of saying,
One drop more in my cup of good fortune! an absurd and
an offensive exhibition of silly optimism of the young, blind
that they are!
For were it known, and surely the happening of it would
be known, that Dudley Sowerby had shaken off the Nesta of
no name, who was the abominable Mrs. Marsett’s friend, a
whirlwind with a trumpet would sweep them into the wilderness
on a blast frightfuller than any ever heard.
Nataly had a fit of weeping for want of the girl’s embrace,
against whom her door was jealously locked. She hoped those
two would talk much, madly if they liked, during dinner,
that she might not be sensible, through any short silence, of
the ardour animating them: especially glowing in Nesta, ready
behind her quiet mask to come brazenly forth. But both of
them were mercilessly ardent; and a sickness of the fear, that
they might fall on her to capture her and hurry her along
with them perforce of the allayed, once fatal, inflammable
element in herself, shook the warmth from her limbs: causing
her to say to herself aloud in a ragged hoarseness, very
strangely: Every thought of mine now has a physical effect
on me!
They had not been two minutes together when she descended
to them. Yet she saw the girl’s heart brimming, either
with some word spoken to her or for joy of an
unmaidenly confession. During dinner they talked, without
distressful pauses. Whatever said, whatever done, was manifestly
another drop in Nesta’s foolish happy cup. Could it be
all because Dartrey Fenellan countenanced her acquaintance
with that woman? The mother had lost hold of her. The
tortured mother had lost hold of herself.
368