And who, calling her his own, could be placed in second rank among the blissful! Mr.Radnor could rationally say that he was made for happiness; he flew to it, he breathed, dispensed it.

How conceive the clear-sighted celestial Powers as opposing his claim to that estate?
Not they.

He knew, for he had them safe in the locked chamber of his breast, to yield him subservient responses.

The world, or Puritanic members of it, had pushed him to the trial once or twice--or had put on an air of doing so; creating a temporary disturbance, ending in a merry duet with his daughter Nesta Victoria: a glorious trio when her mother Natalia, sweet lily that she was, shook the rainwater from her cup and followed the good example to shine in the sun.
He had a secret for them.
Nesta's promising soprano, and her mother's contralto, and his baritone--a true baritone, not so well trained as their accurate notes--should be rising in spirited union with the curtain of that secret: there was matter for song and concert, triumph and gratulation in it.

And during the whole passage of the bridge, he had not once cast thought on a secret so palpitating, the cause of the morning's expedition and a long year's prospect of the present day! It seemed to have been knocked clean out of it--punctilioed out, Fenellan might say.
Nor had any combinations upon the theme of business displaced it.