One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
‘The Marsetts: yes:—well-suited couple enough. It’s to happen
before Winter ends—at once; before Christmas; positively
before next Spring. Fredi’s doing! He has to manage,
arrange.—She’s a good-looking woman, good height, wellrounded;
well-behaved, too: she won’t make a bad Lady
Marsett. Every time that woman spoke of our girl, the tears
jumped to her eyelids.’
‘Come to me before you go to bed,’ Nataly said, rising, her
voice foundering; ‘Good-night, Dartrey.’
She turned to the door; she could not trust herself to shake
hands with composure. Not only was it a nauseous mixture
she was forced to gulp from Victor, it burned like a poison.
‘Really Fredi’s doing—chiefly,’ said Victor, as soon as
Dartrey and he were alone, comfortably settled in the smoking-room.
‘I played the man of pomp with Marsett—good
heavy kind of creature: attached to the woman. She’s the
better horse, as far as brains go. Good enough Lady Marsett.
I harped on Major Worrell: my daughter insulted. He knew
of it—spoke of you properly. The man offered all apologies;
he has told the Major he is no gentleman, not a fit associate
for gentlemen:—quite so—and has cut him dead. Will marry
her, as I said, make her as worthy as he can of the honour of
my daughter’s acquaintance. Rather comical grimace, when
he vowed he’d fasten the tie. He doesn’t like marriage. But,
he can’t give her up. And she’s for patronizing the institution.
But she is ready to say good-bye to him “rather than see
the truest lady in the world insulted”—her words. And so he
swallows his dose for health, and looks a trifle sourish. Antecedents,
I suppose: has to stomach them. But if a man’s fond
of a woman—if he knows he saves her from slipping lower—
and it’s an awful world, for us to let a woman be under its
wheels:—I say, a woman who has a man to lean on, unless
she’s as downright corrupt as two or three of the men we’ve
known:—upon my word, Dartrey, I come round to some of
your ideas on these matters. It’s this girl of mine, this wee bit
of girl in her little nightshirt with the frill, astonishes me
most:—”thinking of the tops of the mountains at night!”
She has positively done the whole of this work-main part. I
smiled when I left the house, to have to own our little Fredi
starting us all on the road. It seems, Marsett had sworn he
would; amorous vow, you know; he never came nearer to
doing it. I hope it’s his better mind now; I do hope the man
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