And a comprehensible pride (for so would Dudley have borne it) keeps the forsaken man silent up to death:...
grandly silent; but the loss of such a woman is enough to kill a man! Not in time, though! Legitimacy evidently, by the mother's confession, cannot protect where it is wanted.

Dudley was optically affected by a round spot of the world swinging its shadow over Nesta.
He pitied, and strove to be sensible of her.

The effort succeeded so well, that he was presently striving to be insensible.

The former state, was the mounting of a wall; the latter, was a sinking through a chasm.
There would be family consultations, abhorrent; his father's agonized amazement at the problem presented to a family of scrupulous principles and pecuniary requirements; his mother's blunt mention of the abominable name--mediaevally vindicated in champions of certain princely families indeed, but morally condemned; always under condemnation of the Church: a blot: and handed down: Posterity, and it might be a titled posterity, crying out.

A man in the situation of Dudley could not think solely of himself.