One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
ture, credulity—the continued trust in the man—is the alternative
of despair.
‘But, Victor, I must ask,’ Nataly said: ‘you have it through
Simeon Fenellan; you have not yourself received the letter
from her lawyer?’
‘My knowledge of what she would do near the grave—
poor soul, yes! I shall soon be hearing.’
‘You do not, propose to enter this place until—until it is
over?’
‘We enter this place, my love, without any sort of ceremony.
We live there independently, and we can we have quarters
there for our friends. Our one neighbour is London—there!
And at Lakelands we are able to entertain London and wife;—
our friends, in short; with some, what we have to call, satellites.
You inspect the house and grounds to-morrow —sure
to be fair. Put aside all but the pleasant recollections of Craye
and Creckholt. We start on a different footing. Really nothing
can be simpler. Keeping your town-house, you are now
and then in residence at Lakelands, where you entertain your
set, teach them to feel the charm of country life: we have
everything about us; could have had our own milk and cream
up to London the last two months. Was it very naughty?—I
should have exploded my surprise! You will see, you will see
to-morrow.’
Nataly nodded, as required. ‘Good news from the mines?’
she said.
He answered: ‘Dartrey is—yes, poor fellow! Dartrey is confident,
from the yield of stones, that the value of our claim
counts in a number of millions. The same with the gold. But
gold-mines are lodgeings, not homes.’
‘Oh, Victor! if money … ! But why did you say “poor fellow”
of Dartrey Fenellan?’
‘You know how he’s …’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said hastily. ‘But has that woman been causing
fresh anxiety?’
‘And Natata’s chief hero on earth is not to be named a poor
fellow,’ said he, after a negative of the head on a subject they
neither of them liked to touch.
Then he remembered that Dartrey Fenellan was actually a
lucky fellow; and he would have mentioned the circumstance
confided to him by Simeon, but for a downright dread of
renewing his painful fit of envy. He had also another, more
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