ster who does that, is
a post, and goes down with the first bursting of the dam. He has tried
compromise and discovered that it does not appease the Fates; is not
even a makeshift-mending at this hour. He is a man of nerves, very
sensitively built; as quick--quicker than a woman, I could almost say,
to feel the tremble of the air-forerunner of imperative changes.'

Dacier brightened fondly. 'You positively describe him; paint him to the
life, without knowing him!'

'I have seen him; and if I paint, whose are the colours?'

'Sometimes I repeat you to him, and I get all the credit,' said Dacier.

'I glow with pride to think of speaking anything that you repeat,' said
Diana, and her eyes were proudly lustreful.

Their love was nourished on these mutual flatteries. Thin food
for passion! The innocence of it sanctioned the meetings and the
appointments to meet. When separated they were interchanging letters,
formally worded in the apostrophe and the termination, but throbbingly
full: or Diana thought so of Percy's letters, with grateful justice; for
his manner of opening his heart in amatory correspondence was to confide
important, secret matters, up to which mark she sprang to reply in
counsel. He proved his affection by trusting her; his respect by his
tempered style: 'A Greenland style of writing,' she had said of an
unhappy gentleman's epistolary compositions resembling it; and now the
same official baldness was to her mind Italianly rich; it called forth
such volumes.

Flatteries that were thin food for passion appeared the simplest
exchanges of courtesy, and her meetings with her lover, judging by
the nature of the discourse they held, so, consequent to their joint
interest in the great crisis anticipated, as to rouse her indignant
surprise and a turn for downright rebellion when the Argus world
signified the fact of its having one eye, or more, wide open.

Debit and Credit, too, her buzzing familiars, insisted on an audience at
each ear, and at the house-door, on her return to London.

CHAPTER XXIX. SHOWS THE APPROACHES OF THE POLITICAL AND THE DOMESTIC
CRISIS IN COMPANY

There was not much talk of Diana between Lady Dunstane and her customary
visitor Tom Redworth now. She was shy in speaking of the love-stricken
woman, and more was in his mind for thought than for speech. She some
times wondered how much he might know, ending with the reflection
that little passing around was unknown to him. He had to