the
alliance; we have to learn, and if we take to activity, with the best
intentions, we conjugate a frightful disturbance. We are to run
on lines, like the steam-trains, or we come to no station, dash to
fragments. I have the misfortune to know I was born an active. I take my
chance.'

Once she coupled the names of Lord Larrian and Lord Dannisburgh,
remarking that she had a fatal attraction for antiques.

The death of her husband's uncle and illness of his aunt withdrew her
to The Crossways, where she remained nursing for several months, reading
diligently, as her letters showed, and watching the approaches of the
destroyer. She wrote like her former self, subdued by meditation in the
presence of that inevitable. The world ceased barking. Lady Dunstane
could suppose Mr. Warwick to have now a reconciling experience of his
wife's noble qualities. He probably did value them more. He spoke of her
to Sir Lukin in London with commendation. 'She is an attentive nurse.'
He inherited a considerable increase of income when he and his wife were
the sole tenants of The Crossways, but disliking the house, for reasons
hard to explain by a man previously professing to share her attachment
to it, he wished to sell or let the place, and his wife would do
neither. She proposed to continue living in their small London
house rather than be cut off from The Crossways, which, he said, was
ludicrous: people should live up to their position; and he sneered at
the place, and slightly wounded her, for she was open to a wound when
the cold fire of a renewed attempt at warmth between them was crackling
and showing bits of flame, after she had given proof of her power to
serve. Service to himself and his relatives affected him. He deferred
to her craze for The Crossways, and they lived in a larger London house,
'up to their position,' which means ever a trifle beyond it, and gave
choice dinner-parties to the most eminent. His jealousy slumbered.
Having ideas of a seat in Parliament at this period, and preferment
superior to the post he held, Mr. Warwick deemed it sagacious to court
the potent patron Lord Dannisburgh could be; and his wife had his
interests at heart, the fork-tongued world said. The cry revived.
Stories of Lord D. and Mrs. W. whipped the hot pursuit. The moral repute
of the great Whig lord and the beauty of the lady composed inflammable
material.

'Are you altogether cautious?' Lady Dunstane wrote to Diana; and her
friend sent