the horrors and loathings of angels rather too much given to claim
distinction from the luckless. A girl who's unprotected may go through
adventures before she fixes, and be a creature of honest intentions.
Better if protected, we all agree. Better also if the world did not
favour the girl's multitude of enemies. Your system of not dealing with
facts openly is everyway favourable to them. I am glad to say, Victor
recognizes what corruption that spread of wealth is accountable for.
And now I must go and have a talk with the--what a change from the blue
butterfly! Eaglet, I ought to have said. I dine with you, for Victor
may bring news.'

'Would anything down there be news to you, Dartrey?'

'He makes it wherever he steps.'

'He would reproach me for not detaining you. Tell Nesta I have to lie
down after talking. She has a child's confidence in you.'

A man of middle age! he said to himself. It is the particular
ejaculation which tames the senior whose heart is for a dash of holiday.
He resolved, that the mother might trust to the discretion of a man of
his age; and he went down to Nesta, grave with the weight his count of
years should give him. Seeing her, the light of what he now knew of her
was an ennobling equal to celestial. For this fair girl was one of the
active souls of the world--his dream to discover in woman's form. She,
the little Nesta, the tall pure-eyed girl before him, was, young though
she was, already in the fight with evil: a volunteer of the army of the
simply Christian. The worse for it? Sowerby would think so. She was
not of the order of young women who, in sheer ignorance or in voluntary,
consent to the peace with evil, and are kept externally safe from the