rtney--Mrs. Warwick's latest
shieldling: he is hardly enrolled for the reason that was assumed to
sanction Mrs. Warwick's maid in the encouragement of her follower.
Miss Paynham sketched on, with her thoughts in her bosom: a damsel
castigatingly pursued by the idea of sex as the direct motive of every
act of every person surrounding, her; deductively therefore that a
certain form of the impelling passion, mild or terrible, or capricious,
or it might be less pardonable, was unceasingly at work among the human
couples up to decrepitude. And she too frequently hit the fact to doubt
her gift of reading into them. Mr. Dacier was plain, and the state of
young Mr. Rhodes; and the Scottish gentleman was at least a vehement
admirer. But she penetrated the breast of Mr. Thomas Redworth as well,
mentally tore his mask of friendship to shreds. He was kind indeed in
commissioning her to do the portrait. His desire for it, and his urgency
to have the features exactly given, besides the infrequency of his
visits of late, when a favoured gentleman was present, were the
betraying signs. Deductively, moreover, the lady who inspired the
passion in numbers of gentlemen and set herself to win their admiration
with her lively play of dialogue, must be coquettish; she could hold
them only by coldness. Anecdotes, epigrams, drolleries, do not bubble to
the lips of a woman who is under an emotional spell: rather they prove
that she has the spell for casting. It suited Mr. Dacier, Miss Paynham
thought: it was cruel to Mr. Redworth; at whom, of all her circle, the
beautiful woman looked, when speaking to him, sometimes tenderly.

'Beware the silent one of an assembly!' Diana had written. She did not
think of her words while Miss Paynham continued mutely sketching. The
silent ones, with much conversation around them, have their heads at
work, critically perforce; the faster if their hands are occupied; and
the point they lean to do is the pivot of their thoughts. Miss Paynham
felt for Mr. Redworth.

Diana was unaware of any other critic present than him she sought to
enliven, not unsuccessfully, notwithstanding his English objection to
the pitch of the converse she led, and a suspicion of effort to support
it:--just a doubt, with all her easy voluble run, of the possibility of
naturalness in a continuous cleverness. But he signified pleasure, and
in pleasing him she was happy: in the knowledge that she dazzled, was
her sense of safety. Percy hated