heart is not of the stuff to break,’ he said, and laughed off her fortuitous thrust straight into it. ‘Another cup, yes. I came…’
‘By night,’ said she, ‘and cleverly found your way, and dined at The Three Ravens, and walked to The Crossways, and met no ghosts.’
‘On the contrary—or at least I saw a couple.’
‘Tell me of them; we breed them here. We sell them periodically to the newspapers!’
‘Well, I started them in their natal locality. I saw them, going down the churchyard, and bellowed after them with all my lungs. I wanted directions to The Crossways; I had missed my way at some turning. In an instant they were vapour.’
Diana smiled. ‘It was indeed a voice to startle delicate apparitions! So do roar Hyrcanean tigers. Pyramus and Thisbe—slaying lions! One of your ghosts carried a loaf of bread, and dropped it in fright; one carried a pound of fresh butter for home consumption. They were in the churchyard for one in passing to kneel at her father’s grave and kiss his tombstone.’
She bowed her head, forgetful of her guard.
The pause presented an opening. Redworth left his chair and walked to the mantelpiece. It was easier to him to speak, not facing her.
‘You have read Lady Dunstane’s letter,’ he began.
She nodded. ‘I have.’
‘Can you resist her appeal to you?’
‘I must.’
‘She is not in a condition to bear it well. You will pardon me, Mrs. Warwick…’
‘Fully! Fully!’
‘I venture to offer merely practical advice. You have thought of it all, but have not felt it. In these cases, the one thing to do is to make a stand. Lady Dunstane has a clear head. She sees what has to be endured by you. Consider: she appeals to me to bring you her letter. Would she have chosen me, or any man, for her messenger, if it had not appeared to her a matter of life and death? You count me among your friends.’
‘One of the truest.’
‘Here are two, then, and your own good sense. For I do not believe it to be a question of courage.’
‘He has commenced. Let him carry it out,’ said Diana.
Her desperation could have added the cry—And give me freedom! That was the secret in her heart. She had struck on the hope for the detested yoke to be broken at any cost.
‘I decline to meet his charges. I despise them. If my friends have faith in me—and they may!—I want nothing more.’
‘Well, I won’t talk commonplaces about the world,’ said Redworth. ‘We can none of us afford to have it against us. Consider a moment: to your friends you are the Diana Merion they knew, and they will not suffer an injury to your good name without a struggle. But if you fly? You leave the dearest you have to the whole brunt of it.
‘They will, if they love me.’
‘They will. But think of the shock to her. Lady Dunstane reads you—’
‘Not quite. No, not if she even wishes me to stay!’ said Diana.
He was too intent on his pleading to perceive a signification.
‘She reads you as clearly in the dark as if you were present with her.’
‘Oh! why am I not ten years older!’ Diana cried, and tried to face round to him, and stopped paralyzed. ‘Ten years older, I could discuss my situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend myself.’
‘And then you would not dream of flight before it!’
‘No, she does not read me: no! She saw that I might come to The Crossways. She—no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof, in contempt of this baseness.’
‘And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest. Her strength will not support it.’
‘Emma! Oh, cruel!’ Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs. She dropped on another chair. ‘Go I must, I cannot turn back. She saw my old attachment to this place. It was not difficult to guess… Who but I can see the wisest course for me!’
‘It comes to this, that the blow aimed at you in your absence will strike her, and mortally,’ said Redworth.
‘Then I say it is terrible to have a friend,’ said Diana, with her bosom heaving.
‘Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two.’
His unstressed observation hit a bell in her head, and set it reverberating. She and Emma had spoken, written, the very words. She drew forth her Emma’s letter from under her left breast, and read some half-blinded lines.
Redworth immediately prepared to leave her to her feelings—trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis.
‘Adieu, for the night, Mrs. Warwick,’ he said, and was guilty of eulogizing the judgement he thought erratic for the moment. ‘Night is a calm adviser. Let me presume to come again in the morning. I dare not go back without you.’
She looked up. As they faced together each saw that the other had passed through a furnace, scorching enough to him, though hers was the delicacy exposed. The reflection had its weight with her during the night.
‘Danvers is getting ready a bed for you; she is airing linen,’ Diana, said. But the bed was declined, and the hospitality was not pressed. The offer of it seemed to him significant of an unwary cordiality and thoughtlessness of tattlers that might account possibly for many things—supposing a fool or madman, or malignants, to interpret them.
‘Then, good night,’ said she.
They joined hands. He exacted no promise that she would be present in the morning to receive him; and it was a consolation to her desire for freedom, until she reflected on the perfect confidence it implied, and felt as a quivering butterfly impalpably pinned.
CHAPTER X. THE CONFLICT OF THE NIGHT
The unfriendliness of the friends who sought to retain her recurred. For look—to fly could not be interpreted as a flight. It was but a stepping aside, a disdain of defending herself, and a wrapping herself in her dignity. Women would be with her. She called on the noblest of them to justify the course she chose, and they did, in an almost audible murmur.
And O the rich reward. A black archway-gate swung open to the glittering fields of freedom.
Emma was not of the chorus. Emma meditated as an invalid. How often had Emma bewailed to her that the most, grievous burden of her malady was her fatal tendency to brood sickly upon human complications! She could not see the blessedness of the prospect of freedom to a woman abominably yoked. What if a miserable woman were dragged through mire to reach it! Married, the mire was her portion, whatever she might do. That man—but pass him!
And that other—the dear, the kind, careless, high-hearted old friend. He could honestly protest his guiltlessness, and would
