thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call
it feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket of
marriage-ties for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon
have to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing of
it, caught at his throat. Reasonably she dreaded the mother's task;
pardonably indeed. But it is for the mother to do, with a girl.
He deputed it lightly to the mother because he could see himself stating
the facts to a son. 'And, my dear boy, you will from this day draw your
five thousand a year, and we double it on the day of your marriage,
living at Lakelands or where you will.'

His desire for his girl's protection by the name of one of our great
Families, urged him to bind Nataly to the fact, with the argument, that
it was preferable for the girl to hear their story during her green early
youth, while she reposed her beautiful blind faith in the discretion of
her parents, and as an immediate step to the placing of her hand in a
husband's. He feared that her mother required schooling to tell the
story vindicatingly and proudly, in a manner to distinguish instead of
degrading or temporarily seeming to accept degradation.

The world would weigh on her confession of the weight of the world on her
child; she would want inciting and strengthening, if one judged of her
capacity to meet the trial by her recent bearing; and how was he to do
it! He could not imagine himself encountering the startled, tremulous,
nascent intelligence in those pure brown darklashed eyes of Nesta; he
pitied the poor mother. Fancifully directing her to say this and that to
the girl, his tongue ran till it was cut from his heart and left to wag
dead colourless words.

The prospect of a similar business of exposition, certainly devolving