ood service, even as our passage through the
flesh may lead to the better state. She had thoughts of the kind, and had
them while encouraging herself to deplore the adieu to her little
musk-scented sitting-room, where a modest freedom breathed, and her
individuality had seemed pointing to a straighter growth.

She nodded subsequently to the truth of her happy Emma's remark: 'You
were created for the world, Tony.' A woman of blood and imagination in
the warring world, without a mate whom she can revere, subscribes to a
likeness with those independent minor realms between greedy mighty
neighbours, which conspire and undermine when they do not openly threaten
to devour. So, then, this union, the return to the wedding yoke, received
sanction of grey-toned reason. She was not enamoured she could say it to
herself. She had, however, been surprised, both by the man and her
unprotesting submission; surprised and warmed, unaccountably warmed.
Clearness of mind in the woman chaste by nature, however little ignorant
it allowed her to be in the general review of herself, could not compass
the immediately personal, with its acknowledgement of her subserviency to
touch and pressure--and more, stranger, her readiness to kindle. She left
it unexplained. Unconsciously the image of Dacier was effaced. Looking
backward, her heart was moved to her long-constant lover with most
pitying tender wonderment--stormy man, as her threatened senses told her
that he was. Looking at him, she had to mask her being abashed and
mastered. And looking forward, her soul fell in prayer for this true
man's never repenting of his choice. Sure of her now, Mr. Thomas Redworth
had returned to the station of the courtier, and her feminine sovereignty
was not ruffled to make her feel too feminine. Another revelation was his
playful talk when they were more closely intimate. He had his humour as
well as his hearty relish of hers.

'If all Englishmen were like him!' she chimed with Emma Dunstane's
eulogies, under the influence.

'My dear,' the latter replied, 'we should simply march over the Four
Quarters and be blessed by the nations! Only, avoid your trick of dashing
headlong to the other extreme. He has his faults.'

'Tell me of them,' Diana cooed for an answer. 'Do. I want the flavour. A
girl would be satisfied with superhuman excellence. A widow asks for
feature.'

'To my thinking, the case is, that if it is a widow who sees the
superhuman excellence in a