Victor could make her treacherous to her wishes, in revolt against them, though the heart protested.

His first conquest of her was in her blood, to weaken a spirit of resistance.

For the precedent of submission is a charm upon the faint-hearted through love: it unwinds, unwills them.
Nataly resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and she had her moral sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting consciousness of material support in the thought, that the day was not present, was possibly distant, might never arrive.

Would Victor's release come sooner?
And that was a prospect bearing resemblance to hopes of the cure of a malady through a sharp operation.
These were matters going on behind the curtain; as wholly vital to her, and with him at times almost as dominant, as the spiritual in memory, when flesh has left but its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten; and all their talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions to Lakelands, music, public affairs, the pardonable foibles of friends created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and heroines, exhibitions of pictures, the sorrows of Crowned Heads, so serviceable ever to mankind as an admonition to the ambitious, a salve to the envious!--in fine, whatsoever can entertain or affect the most social of couples, domestically without a care to appearance.

And so far they partially--dramatically--deceived themselves by imposing on the world while they talked and duetted; for the purchase of furniture from a flowing purse is a cheerful occupation; also a City issuing out of hospital, like this poor City of London, inspires good citizens to healthy activity.