had a guided
girlhood, a thick-curtained prudence; and in having stock in the moral
funds, shares in the sentimental tramways. Wherever the world laid its
hoards or ran its lines, she was found, and forcible enough to be
eminent; though at fixed hours of the day, even as she washed her hands,
she abjured worldliness: a performance that cleansed her. If she did not
make morality appear loveable to the objects of her dislike, it was owing
to her want of brains to see the origin, nature and right ends of
morality. But a world yet more deficient than she, esteemed her cordially
for being a bulwark of the present edifice; which looks a solid structure
when the microscope is not applied to its components.

Supposing Percy Dacier a dishonourable tattler as well as an icy lover,
and that Lady Wathin, through his bride, had become privy to the secret
between him and Diana? There is reason to think that she would have held
it in terror over the baneful woman, but not have persecuted her: for she
was by no means the active malignant of theatrical plots. No, she would
have charged it upon the possession of brains by women, and have had a
further motive for inciting the potent dignitary her husband to employ
his authority to repress the sex's exercise of those fell weapons,
hurtful alike to them and all coming near them.

So extreme was her dread of Mrs. Warwick, that she drove from the London
railway station to see Constance and be reassured by her tranquil aspect.

Sweet Constance and her betrothed Percy were together, examining a
missal.

Lady Dunstane despatched a few words of the facts to Diana. She hoped to
hear from her; rather hoped, for the moment, not to see her. No answer
came. The great day of the nuptials came and passed. She counted on her
husband's appearance the next morning, as the good gentleman made a point
of visiting her, to entertain the wife he adored, whenever he had a
wallet of gossip that would overlay the blank of his absence. He had been
to the church of the wedding--he did not say with whom: all the world was
there; and he rapturously described the ceremony, stating that it set
women weeping and caused him to behave like a fool.

'You are impressionable,' said his wife.

He murmured something in praise of the institution of marriage--when
celebrated impressively, it seemed.

'Tony calls the social world "the theatre of appetites," as we have it at
present,' she said; 'and the world at a wedding is