There he stopped, not too soon. The girl was mute, fully agreeing,
slightly hardening. She had a painful sense of separation from her dear
Louise. And it was now to be from her mother as well: she felt the pain
when kissing her mother in bed. But this was moderated by the prospect
of a holiday away out of reach of Mr. Barmby's pursuing voice, whom her
mother favoured: and her mother was concealing something from her; so she
could not make the confidante of her mother. Nataly had no forewarnings.
Her simple regrets filled her bosom. All night she had been taking her
chastisement, and in the morning it seemed good to her, that she should
be denuded, for her girl to learn the felicity of having relatives.

For some reason, over which Nataly mused in the succeeding hours, the
girl had not spoken of any visit her mother was to pay to the Duvidney
ladies or they to her. Latterly she had not alluded to her mother's
family. It might mean, that the beloved and dreaded was laying finger on
a dark thing in the dark; reading syllables by touch; keeping silence
over the communications to a mind not yet actively speculative, as it is
a way with young women. 'With young women educated for the market, to be
timorous, consequently secretive, rather snaky,' Colney Durance had said.
Her Nesta was not one of the 'framed and glazed' description, cited by
him, for an example of the triumph of the product; 'exactly harmonious
with the ninny male's ideal of female innocence.' No; but what if the
mother had opened her heart to her girl? It had been of late her wish or
a dream, shaping hourly to a design, now positively to go through that
furnace. Her knowledge of Victor's objection, restrained an impulse that
had not won spring enough to act against his counsel or vivify an
intelligence grown dull in slavery under him, with regard to the one
seeming right course. The adoption of it would have wounded him--
therefore her. She had thought of him first; she had also thought of