position in regarding
that legitimate band so scornfully: another glimpse likewise of a day to
come when they might not be stopped at the door. She was running a race
with something; with what? It was unnamed; it ran in a shroud.

At times she surprised her heart violently beating when there had not
been a thought to set it in motion. She traced it once to the words,
'next year,' incidentally mentioned. 'Free,' was a word that checked her
throbs, as at a question of life or death. Her solitude, excepting
the hours of sleep, if then, was a time of irregular breathing. The
something unnamed, running beside her, became a dreadful familiar; the
race between them past contemplation for ghastliness. 'But this is your
Law!' she cried to the world, while blinding her eyes against a peep of
the shrouded features.

Singularly, she had but to abandon hope, and the shadowy figure
vanished, the tragic race was ended. How to live and think, and not to
hope: the slave of passion had this problem before her.

Other tasks were supportable, though one seemed hard at moments and
was not passive; it attacked her. The men and women of her circle
derisively, unanimously, disbelieved in an innocence that forfeited
reputation. Women were complimentarily assumed to be not such gaping
idiots. And as the weeks advanced, a change came over Percy. The
gentleman had grown restless at covert congratulations, hollow to his
knowledge, however much caressing vanity, and therefore secretly a wound
to it. One day, after sitting silent, he bluntly proposed to break 'this
foolish trifling'; just in his old manner, though not so honourably; not
very definitely either. Her hand was taken.

'I feared that dumbness!' Diana said, letting her hand go, but keeping
her composure. 'My friend Percy, I am not a lion-tamer, and if you are
of those animals, we break the chapter. Plainly you think that where
there appears to be a choice of fools, the woman is distinctly designed
for the person. Drop my hand, or I shall repeat the fable of the Goose
with the Golden Eggs.'

'Fables are applicable only in the school-room,' said he; and he
ventured on 'Tony!'

'I vowed an oath to my dear Emma--as good as to the heavens! and that
of itself would stay me from being insane again.' She released herself.
'Signor Percy, you teach me to suspect you of having an idle wish
to pluck your plaything to pieces:--to boast of it? Ah! my friend, I
fancied I was of more value to you.