One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
in report of the union.
‘You must expect to be invaded, sir,’ said Mr. Sowerby;
and Victor shrugged: ‘We are pretty safe.’
‘The lock of a door seems a potent security until some one
outside is heard fingering the handle nigh midnight,’ Fenellan
threw out his airy nothing of a remark.
It struck on Nataly’s heart. ‘So you will not let us be lonely
here,’ she said to her guests.
The Rev. Septimus Barmby was mouthpiece for congregations.
Sound of a subterranean roar, with a blast at the orifice,
informed her of their ‘very deep happiness in the privilege.’
He comforted her. Nesta smiled on him thankfully.
‘Don’t imagine, Mrs. Victor, that you can be shut off from
neighbours, in a house like this; and they have a claim,’ said
Lady Grace, quitting the table.
Fenellan and Colney thought so:
‘Like mice at a cupboard.’
‘Beetles in a kitchen.’
‘No, no-no, no !’ Victor shook head, pitiful over the good
people likened to things unclean, and royally upraising them:
in doing which, he scattered to vapour the leaden incubi
they had been upon his flatter moods of late. ‘No, but it’s a
rapture to breathe the air here!’ His lifted chest and nostrils
were for the encouragement of Nataly to soar beside him.
She summoned her smile and nodded.
He spoke aside to Lady Grace: ‘The dear soul wants time
to compose herself after a grand surprise.’
She replied: ‘I think I could soon be reconciled. How much
land?’
‘In treaty for some hundred and eighty or ninety acres …
in all at present three hundred and seventy, including plantations,
lake, outhouses.’
‘Large enough; land paying as it does—that is, not paying.
We shall be having to gamble in the City systematically for
subsistence.’
‘You will not so much as jest on the subject.’
Coming from such a man, that was clear sky thunder. The
lady played it off in a shadowy pout and shrug while taking
a stamp of his masterfulness, not so volatile.
She said to Nataly: ‘Our place in Worcestershire is about
half the size, if as much. Large enough when we’re not
crowded out with gout and can open to no one. Some day
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