prepare, I feared it; I was sure.'

Her mother breathed a little moan: 'Not a cottage?'

'He has not mentioned it to Mr. Durance.'

'Why not?'

'Mr. Fenellan has been his confidant.'

'My darling, we did wrong to let it go on, without speaking. You don't
know for certain yet?'

'It's a large estate, mama, and a big new house.'

Nataly's bosom sank. 'Ah me! here's misery! I ought to have known.
And too late now it has gone so far! But I never imagined he would be
building.'

She caught herself languishing at her toilette-glass, as, if her beauty
were at stake; and shut her eyelids angrily. To be looking in that
manner, for a mere suspicion, was too foolish. But Nesta's divinations
were target-arrows; they flew to the mark. Could it have been expected
that Victor would ever do anything on a small scale? O the dear little
lost lost cottage! She thought of it with a strain of the arms of
womanhood's longing in the unblessed wife for a babe. For the secluded
modest cottage would not rack her with the old anxieties, beset her with
suspicions. . . .

'My child, you won't possibly have time before the dinner-hour,' she said