upulousness
was most pitiable.

She read: 'The wisest thing a waif can do.' It bore a sound of
desperation. Avowedly Tony had accepted him without being in love. Or was
she masking the passion? No: had it been a case of love, she would have
written very differently to her friend.

Lady Dunstane controlled the pricking of the wound inflicted by Diana's
novel exercise in laconics where the fullest flow was due to tenderness,
and despatched felicitations upon the text of the initial line: 'Wonders
are always happening.' She wrote to hide vexation beneath surprise;
naturally betraying it. 'I must hope and pray that you have not been
precipitate.' Her curiosity to inspect the happiest of men, the most
genuine part of her letter, was expressed coldly.

When she had finished the composition she perused it, and did not
recognize herself in her language, though she had been so guarded to
cover the wound her Tony dealt their friendship--in some degree injuring
their sex. For it might now, after such an example, verily seem that
women are incapable of a translucent perfect confidence: their impulses,
caprices, desperations, tricks of concealment, trip a heart-whole
friendship. Well, to-morrow, if not to-day, the tripping may be expected!
Lady Dunstane resigned herself sadly to a lowered view of her Tony's
character. This was her unconscious act of reprisal. Her brilliant
beloved Tony, dazzling but in beauty and the gifted mind, stood as one
essentially with the common order of women. She wished to be settled, Mr.
Warwick proposed, and for the sake of living at The Crossways she
accepted him--she, the lofty scorner of loveless marriages! who had
said--how many times! that nothing save love excused it! She degraded
their mutual high standard of womankind. Diana was in eclipse, full three
parts. The bulk of the gentlemanly official she had chosen obscured her.
But I have written very carefully, thought Lady Dunstane, dropping her
answer into the post-bag. She had, indeed, been so care ful, that to
cloak her feelings, she had written as another person. Women with otiose
husbands have a task to preserve friendship.

Redworth carried his burden through the frosty air at a pace to melt
icicles in Greenland. He walked unthinkingly, right ahead, to the red
West, as he discovered when pausing to consult his watch. Time was left
to return at the same pace and dress for dinner; he swung round and
picked up remembrances of sensations he ha