dare write our designs for the month to come? Ah!--I will say--Nesta!
give me the hope I beg to have. See the seriousness. You are at
liberty. That other has withdrawn his pretensions. We will not blame
him. He is in expectation of exalted rank. Where there is any shadow
. . . !' Mr. Barmby paused on his outroll of the word; but
immediately, not intending to weigh down his gentle hearer with the
significance in it, resumed at a yet more sonorous depth: 'He is under
the obligation to his family; an old, a venerable family. In the full
blaze of public opinion! His conduct can be palliated by us, too.
There is a right and wrong in minor things, independent of the higher
rectitude. We pardon, we can partly support, the worldly view.'

'There is a shadow?' said Nesta; and her voice was lurefully encouraging.

He was on the footing where men are precipitated by what is within them
to blunder. 'On you--no. On you personally, not at all. No. It could
not be deemed so. Not by those knowing, esteeming--not by him who loves
you, and would, with his name, would, with his whole strength, envelop,
shield . . . certainly, certainly not.'

'It is on my parents?' she said.

'But to me nothing, nothing, quite nought! To confound the innocent with
the guilty! . . . and excuses may exist. We know but how little we
know!'

'It is on both my parents?' she said; with a simplicity that induced him
to reply: 'Before the world. But not, I repeat . . .'

The band-instruments behind the sheltering glass flourished on their