upon the father in treaty with the fortunate youth, gripped at his vitals
a minute, so intense was his pride in appearing woundless and scarless,
a shining surface, like pure health's, in the sight of men. Nevertheless
he skimmed the story, much as a lecturer strikes his wand on the
prominent places of a map, that is to show us how he arrived at the
principal point, which we are all agreed to find chiefly interesting.
This with Victor was the naming of Nesta's bridal endowment. He rushed
to it. 'My girl will have ten thousand a year settled on her the day of
her marriage.' Choice of living at Lakelands was offered.

It helped him over the unpleasant part of that interview. At the same
time, it moved him to a curious contempt of the youth. He had to
conjure-up an image of the young man in person, to correct the
sentiment:--and it remained as a kind of bruise only half cured.

Mr. Dudley Sowerby was not one of the youths whose presence would rectify
such an abstract estimate of the genus pursuer. He now came frequently
of an evening, to practise a duet for flutes with Victor;--a Mercadante,
honeyed and flowing; too honeyed to suit a style that, as Fenellan
characterized it to Nataly, went through the music somewhat like an
inquisitive tourist in a foreign town, conscientious to get to the end of
the work of pleasure; until the notes had become familiar, when it rather
resembled a constable's walk along the midnight streets into collision
with a garlanded roysterer; and the man of order and the man of passion,
true to the measure though they were, seeming to dissent, almost to
wrangle, in their different ways of winding out the melody, on to the
last movement; which was plainly a question between home to the strayed
reveller's quarters or off to the lockup. Victor was altogether the
younger of the two. But his vehement accompaniment was a tutorship;
Mr. Sowerby improved; it was admitted by Nesta and mademoiselle that