d on
her by circumstances.

Besides, her position and Percy Dacier's threw the fancied danger into
remoteness. The world was her stepmother, vigilant to become her judge;
and the world was his taskmaster, hopeful of him, yet able to strike him
down for an offence. She saw their situation as he did. The course of
folly must be bravely taken, if taken at all: Disguise degraded her to
the reptiles.

This was faced. Consequently there was no fear of it.

She had very easily proved that she had skill and self-possession to
keep him rational, and therefore they could continue to meet. A little
outburst of frenzy to a reputably handsome woman could be treated as the
froth of a passing wave. Men have the trick, infants their fevers.

Diana's days were spent in reasoning. Her nights were not so tuneable
to the superior mind. When asleep she was the sport of elves that danced
her into tangles too deliciously unravelled, and left new problems for
the wise-eyed and anxious morning. She solved them with the thought
that in sleep it was the mere ordinary woman who fell a prey to her
tormentors; awake, she dispersed the swarm, her sky was clear. Gradually
the persecution ceased, thanks to her active pen.

A letter from her legal adviser, old Mr. Braddock, informed her that no
grounds existed for apprehending marital annoyance, and late in May her
household had resumed its customary round.

She examined her accounts. The Debit and Credit sides presented much
of the appearance of male and female in our jog-trot civilization. They
matched middling well; with rather too marked a tendency to strain the
leash and run frolic on the part of friend Debit (the wanton male),
which deepened the blush of the comparison. Her father had noticed the
same funny thing in his effort to balance his tugging accounts: 'Now
then for a look at Man and Wife': except that he made Debit stand for
the portly frisky female, Credit the decorous and contracted other half,
a prim gentleman of a constitutionally lean habit of body, remonstrating
with her. 'You seem to forget that we are married, my dear, and must
walk in step or bundle into the Bench,' Dan Merion used to say.

Diana had not so much to rebuke in Mr. Debit; or not at the first
reckoning. But his ways were curious. She grew distrustful of him,
after dismissing him with a quiet admonition and discovering a series
of ambush bills, which he must have been aware of when he was allowed to
pass as an