One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
shall be confounded.
Hereupon Victor hopped on to Fenellan’s hint regarding
the designs of Mrs. Burman.
His Nataly might have to go through a short sharp term of
scorching—Godiva to the gossips.
She would come out of it glorified. She would be reconciled
with her family. With her story of her devotion to the
man loving her, the world would know her for the heroine
she was: a born lady, in appearance and manner an empress
among women. It was a story to be pleaded in any court,
before the sternest public. Mrs. Burman had thrown her into
temptation’s way. It was a story to touch the heart, as none
other ever written of over all the earth was there a woman
equalling his Nataly!
And their Nesta would have a dowry to make princesses
envious:—she would inherit … he ran up an arithmetical
column, down to a line of figures in addition, during three
paces of his feet. Dartrey Fenellan had said of little Nesta
once, that she had a nature pure and sparkling as mid-sea
foam. Happy he who wins her! But she was one of the young
women who are easily pleased and hardly enthralled. Her
father strained his mind for the shape of the man to accomplish
the feat. Whether she had an ideal of a youth in her
feminine head, was beyond his guessing. She was not the
damsel to weave a fairy waistcoat for the identical prince,
and try it upon all comers to discover him: as is done by
some; excuseably, if we would be just. Nesta was of the elect,
for whom excuses have not to be made. She would probably
like a flute-player best; because her father played the flute,
and she loved him—laughably a little maiden’s reason! Her
father laughed at her.
Along the street of Clubs, where a bruised fancy may see
black balls raining, the narrow way between ducal mansions
offers prospect of the sweep of greensward, all but touching
up to the sunset to draw it to the dance.
Formerly, in his very early youth, he clasped a dream of gaining
way to an alliance with one of these great surrounding
houses; and he had a passion for the acquisition of money as a
means. And it has to be confessed, he had sacrificed in youth
a slice of his youth, to gain it without labour—usually a costly
purchase. It had ended disastrously: or say, a running of the
engine off the rails, and a speedy re-establishment of traffic.
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