to Nesta was hardly warmed by the glitter of diamonds. His next visit
showed him livelier in courtliness, brighter, fresher; but that was
always his way at the commencement of every visit, as if his reflections
on the foregone had come to a satisfactory conclusion; and the labours of
the new study of the maiden ensued again in due course to deaden him.

Gentleman he was. In the recognition of his quality as a man of
principle and breeding, Nataly was condemned by thoughts of Nesta's
future to question whether word or act of hers should, if inclination on
both sides existed, stand between her girl and a true gentleman. She
counselled herself, as if the counsel were in requisition, to be passive;
and so doing, she more acutely than Victor--save in his chance flashes--
discerned the twist of her very nature caused by their false position.
And her panacea for ills, the lost little cottage, would not have averted
it: she would there have had the same coveting desire to name a man of
breeding, honour, station, for Nesta's husband. Perhaps in the cottage,
choosing at leisure, her consent to see the brilliant young creature tied
to the best of dull men would have been unready, without the girl to push
it. For the Hon. Dudley was lamentably her pupil in liveliness; he took
the second part, as it is painful for a woman with the old-fashioned
ideas upon the leading of the sexes to behold; resembling in his look the
deaf, who constantly require to have an observation repeated; resembling
the most intelligent of animals, which we do not name, and we reprove
ourselves for seeing likeness.

Yet the likeness or apparent likeness would suggest that we have not so
much to fear upon the day of the explanation to him. Some gain is there.
Shameful thought! Nataly hastened her mind to gather many instances or
indications testifying to the sterling substance in young Mr. Sowerby,
such as a mother would pray for her son-in-law to possess. She