piracy, and now, in expiation, professes piety,
fearful of a discovered Omnipotence, which is in the image of themselves
and captain. Their old habits are not quite abandoned, and their new one
is used as a lash to whip the exposed of us for a propitiation of the
capricious potentate whom they worship in the place of the true God.'

Lady Dunstane sniffed. 'I smell the leading article.'

Diana joined with her smile, 'No, the style is rather different.'

'Have you not got into a trick of composing in speaking, at times?'

Diana confessed, 'I think I have at times. Perhaps the daily writing of
all kinds and the nightly talking... I may be getting strained.'

'No, Tony; but longer visits in the country to me would refresh you. I
miss your lighter touches. London is a school, but, you know it, not a
school for comedy nor for philosophy; that is gathered on my hills,
with London distantly in view, and then occasional descents on it well
digested.'

'I wonder whether it is affecting me!' said Diana, musing. 'A
metropolitan hack! and while thinking myself free, thrice harnessed; and
all my fun gone. Am I really as dull as a tract, my dear? I must be,
or I should be proving the contrary instead of asking. My pitfall is
to fancy I have powers equal to the first look-out of the eyes of the
morning. Enough of me. We talked of Mary Paynham. If only some right
good man would marry her!'

Lady Dunstane guessed at the right good man in Diana's mind. 'Do you
bring them together?'

Diana nodded, and then shook doleful negatives to signify no hope.

'None whatever--if we mean the same person,' said Lady Dunstane,
bethinking her, in the spirit of wrath she felt at such a scheme being
planned by Diana to snare the right good man, that instead of her own
true lover Redworth, it might be only Percy Dacier. So filmy of mere
sensations are these little ideas as they flit in converse, that she did
not reflect on her friend's ignorance of Redworth's love of her, or
on the unlikely choice of one in Dacier's high station to reinstate a
damsel.

They did not name the person.

'Passing the instance, which is cruel, I will be just to society thus
far,' said Diana. 'I was in a boat at Richmond last week, and Leander
was revelling along the mud-banks, and took it into his head to swim
out to me, and I was moved to take him on board. The ladies in the boat
objected, for he was not only wet but very muddy. I was forced to own
that their obje