.' Her meetings with Percy Dacier
were therefore hardly shunned; and his behaviour did not warn her to
discountenance them. It would have been cruel to exclude him from her
select little dinners of eight. Whitmonby, Westlake, Henry Wilmers and
the rest, she perhaps aiding, schooled him in the conversational
art. She heard it said of him, that the courted discarder of the sex,
hitherto a mere politician, was wonderfully humanized. Lady Pennon fell
to talking of him hopefully. She declared him to be one of the men who
unfold tardily, and only await the mastering passion. If the passion had
come, it was controlled. His command of himself melted Diana. How could
she forbid his entry to the houses she frequented? She was glad to see
him. He showed his pleasure in seeing her. Remembering his tentative
indiscretion on those foreign sands, she reflected that he had been
easily checked: and the like was not to be said of some others.
Beautiful women in her position provoke an intemperateness that
contrasts touchingly with the self-restraint of a particular admirer.
Her 'impassioned Caledonian' was one of a host, to speak of whom and
their fits of lunacy even to her friend Emma, was repulsive. She bore
with them, foiled them, passed them, and recovered her equanimity; but
the contrast called to her to dwell on it, the self-restraint whispered
of a depth of passion....

She was shocked at herself for a singular tremble 'she experienced,
without any beating of the heart, on hearing one day that the marriage
of Percy Dacier and Miss Asper was at last definitely fixed. Mary
Paynham brought her the news. She had it from a lady who had come across
Miss Asper at Lady Wathin's assemblies, and considered the great heiress
extraordinarily handsome.

'A golden miracle,' Diana gave her words to say. 'Good looks and gold
together are rather superhuman. The report may be this time true.' Next
afternoon the card of Lady Wathin requested Mrs. Warwick to grant her a
private interview.

Lady Wathin, as one of the order of women who can do anything in a holy
cause, advanced toward Mrs. Warwick, unabashed by the burden of her
mission, and spinally prepared, behind benevolent smilings, to repay
dignity of mien with a similar erectness of dignity. They touched
fingers and sat. The preliminaries to the matter of the interview were
brief between ladies physically sensible of antagonism and mutually too
scornful of subterfuges in one another's presenc