One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
‘Married or not!’ he cried, and murmured: ‘I have borne—
. These may be Mr. Dartrey Fenellan’s ideas; they are not
mine. I have—Something at least is due to me: Ask any
lady:—there are clergymen, I know, clergymen who are for
uplifting—quite right, but not associating:—to call one of
them a friend! Ask any lady, any! Your mother …’
‘I beg you will not distress my mother,’ said Nesta.
‘I beg to know whether this correspondence is to continue?’
said Dudley.
‘All my life, if I do not feel dishonoured by it.’
‘You are.’ He added hastily: ‘Counsels of prudence—there
is not a lady living who would tell you otherwise. At all events,
in public opinion, if it were known—and it would certainly
be known,—a lady, wife or spinster, would suffer—would not
escape the—at least shadow of defilement from relationship,
any degree of intimacy with … hard words are wholesome in
such a case: “touch pitch,” yes! My sense is coherent.’
‘Quite,’ said Nesta.
‘And you do not agree with me?’
‘I do not.’
‘Do you pretend to be as able to judge as I?’
‘In this instance, better.’
‘Then I retire. I cannot retain my place here. You may
depend upon it, the world is not wrong when it forbids young
ladies to have cognizance of women leading disorderly lives.’
‘Only the women, Mr. Sowerby?’
‘Men, too, of course.’
‘You do not exclude the men from Society.’
‘Oh! one reads that kind of argument in books.’
‘Oh! the worthy books, then. I would read them, if I could
find them.’
‘They are banned by self-respecting readers.’
‘It grieves me to think differently.’
Dudley looked on this fair girl, as yet innocent girl; and
contrasting her with the foulness of the subject she dared discuss,
it seemed to him, that a world which did not puff at her
and silence, if not extinguish, was in a state of liquefaction.
Remembering his renewed repentances his absence, he said:
‘I do hope you may come to see, that the views shared by
your mother and me are not erroneous.’
‘But do not distress her,’ Nesta implored him. ‘She is not
well. When she has grown stronger, her kind heart will move
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