e self and his castigating, but avowedly
sovereign, principle. Away from her, he was the victim of a flagellation
so dire that it almost drove him to revolt against the lord he served,
and somehow the many memories at Copsley kept him away. Sir Lukin, when
speaking of Diana's 'engagement to that fellow Warwick,' exalted her
with an extraordinary enthusiasm, exceedingly hard for the silly beast
who had lost her to bear. For the present the place dearest to Redworth
of all places on earth was unendurable.

Meanwhile the value of railway investments rose in the market, fast
as asparagus-heads for cutting: a circumstance that added stings
to reflection. Had he been only a little bolder, a little less the
fanatical devotee of his rule of masculine honour, less the slave to the
letter of success.... But why reflect at all? Here was a goodly income
approaching, perhaps a seat in Parliament; a station for the airing of
his opinions--and a social status for the wife now denied to him.
The wife was denied to him; he could conceive of no other. The
tyrant-ridden, reticent, tenacious creature had thoroughly wedded her
in mind; her view of things had a throne beside his own, even in their
differences. He perceived, agreeing or disagreeing, the motions of her
brain, as he did with none other of women; and this it is which stamps
character on her, divides her from them, upraises and enspheres. He
declined to live with any other of the sex.

Before he could hear of the sort of man Mr. Warwick was--a perpetual
object of his quest--the bridal bells had rung, and Diana Antonia Merion
lost her maiden name. She became the Mrs. Warwick of our footballing
world.

Why she married, she never told. Possibly, in amazement at herself
subsequently, she forgot the specific reason. That which weighs heavily
in youth, and commits us to desperate action, will be a trifle under
older eyes, to blunter senses, a more enlightened understanding. Her
friend Emma probed for the reason vainly. It was partly revealed to
Redworth, by guess-work and a putting together of pieces, yet quite
luminously, as it were by touch of tentacle-feelers--one evening that he
passed with Sir Lukin Dunstane, when the lachrymose ex-dragoon and son
of Idlesse, had rather more than dined.

CHAPTER VI. THE COUPLE

Six months a married woman, Diana came to Copsley to introduce her
husband. They had run over Italy: 'the Italian Peninsula,' she quoted
him in a letter to Lady