her ignorant! She frightens me. Mr. Sowerby is indulgent. He does me
justice. My duty to her--I must defend myself--has been my first
thought. I said in my prayers--she at least! . . . We have to see
the more than common reasons why she, of all girls, should--he did not
hint it, he was delicate: her name must not be public.'

'Yes, yes, Dudley is without parallel as a gentleman,' said Victor. 'It
does not suit me to hear the word "indulgent." My dear, if you were down
there, you would discover that the talk was the talk of two or three men
seeing our girl ride by--and she did ride with a troop: why, we've
watched them along the parade, often. Clear as day how it happened!
I'll go down early to-morrow.'

He fancied Nataly was appeased. And even out of this annoyance, there
was the gain of her being won to favour Dudley's hitherto but tolerated
suit.

Nataly also had the fancy, that the calm following on her anguish, was a
moderation of it. She was kept strung to confide in her girl by the
recent indebtedness to her for words heavenly in the strengthening
comfort they gave. But no sooner was she alone than her torturing
perplexities and her abasement of the hours previous to Victor's
coming returned.

For a girl of Nesta's head could not be deceived; she had come home with
a woman's intelligence of the world, hard knowledge of it--a knowledge
drawn from foul wells, the unhappy mother imagined: she dreaded to probe
to the depth of it. She had in her wounded breast the world's idea, that
corruption must come of the contact with impurity.