used to choose your holidays in
November.'

She thrilled him with her friendly recollection of his customs.

'As to happiness, the looking forward is happiness,' he remarked.

'Oh, the looking back! back!' she cried.

'Forward! that is life.'

'And backward, death, if you will; and still at is happiness. Death, and
our postillion!'

'Ay; I wonder why the fellow hangs to the rear,' said Redworth, turning
about.

'It's his cunning strategy, poor creature, so that he may be thought to
have delivered us at the head of the town, for us to make a purchase or
two, if we go to the inn on foot,' said Diana. 'We 'll let the manoeuvre
succeed.'

Redworth declared that she had a head for everything, and she was
flattered to hear him.

So passing from the southern into the western road, they saw the
town-lights beneath an amber sky burning out sombrely over the woods of
Copsley, and entered the town, the postillion following.

CHAPTER XII. BETWEEN EMMA AND DIANA

Diana was in the arms of her friend at a late hour of the evening, and
Danvers breathed the amiable atmosphere of footmen once more, professing
herself perished. This maid of the world, who could endure hardships and
loss of society for the mistress to whom she was attached, no sooner
saw herself surrounded by the comforts befitting her station, than
she indulged in the luxury of a wailful dejectedness, the better to
appreciate them. She was unaffectedly astonished to find her outcries
against the cold and the journeyings to and fro interpreted as a
serving-woman's muffled comments on her mistress's behaviour. Lady
Dunstane's maid Bartlett, and Mrs. Bridges the housekeeper, and Foster
the butler, contrived to let her know that they could speak an if they
would; and they expressed their pity of her to assist her to begin the
speaking. She bowed in acceptance of Fosters offer of a glass of wine
after supper, but treated him and the other two immediately as though
they had been interrogating bigwigs.

'They wormed nothing out of me,' she said to her mistress at night,
undressing her. 'But what a set they are! They've got such comfortable
places, they've all their days and hours for talk of the doings of their
superiors. They read the vilest of those town papers, and they put their
two and two together of what is happening in and about. And not one of
the footmen thinks of staying, because it 's so dull; and they and the
maids object--did one ever hear?--