irect motive of every
act of every person surrounding, her; deductively therefore that a
certain form of the impelling passion, mild or terrible, or capricious,
or it might be less pardonable, was unceasingly at work among the human
couples up to decrepitude. And she too frequently hit the fact to doubt
her gift of reading into them. Mr. Dacier was plain, and the state of
young Mr. Rhodes; and the Scottish gentleman was at least a vehement
admirer. But she penetrated the breast of Mr. Thomas Redworth as well,
mentally tore his mask of friendship to shreds. He was kind indeed in
commissioning her to do the portrait. His desire for it, and his urgency
to have the features exactly given, besides the infrequency of his visits
of late, when a favoured gentleman was present, were the betraying signs.
Deductively, moreover, the lady who inspired the passion in numbers of
gentlemen and set herself to win their admiration with her lively play of
dialogue, must be coquettish; she could hold them only by coldness.
Anecdotes, epigrams, drolleries, do not bubble to the lips of a woman who
is under an emotional spell: rather they prove that she has the spell for
casting. It suited Mr. Dacier, Miss Paynham thought: it was cruel to Mr.
Redworth; at whom, of all her circle, the beautiful woman looked, when
speaking to him, sometimes tenderly.

'Beware the silent one of an assembly!' Diana had written. She did not
think of her words while Miss Paynham continued mutely sketching. The
silent ones, with much conversation around them, have their heads at
work, critically perforce; the faster if their hands are occupied; and
the point they lean to do is the pivot of their thoughts. Miss Paynham
felt for Mr. Redworth.

Diana was unaware of any other critic present than him she sought to
enliven, not unsuccessfully, notwithstanding his English objection to the
pitch of the converse she led, and a suspicion of effort to support
it:--just a doubt, with all her easy voluble run, of the possibility of
naturalness in a continuous cleverness. But he signified pleasure, and in
pleasing him she was happy: in the knowledge that she dazzled, was her
sense of safety. Percy hated scandal; he heard none. He wanted stirring,
cheering; in her house he had it. He came daily, and as it was her wish
that new themes, new flights of converse, should delight him and show her
exhaustless, to preserve her ascendancy, she welcomed him without
consulting the world. He