He reserved his “confessions,” of course, for the tete-a-tete of country walks.  It was then that Diana seemed to be holding in her girlish hands something very complex and rare; a nature not easily to be understood by one so much younger.  His extraordinary gifts, his disinterested temper, his astonishing powers of work raised him in her eyes to heroic stature.  And then some very human weakness, some natural vanity, such as wives love and foster in their husbands, but which, in his case appeared merely forlorn and eccentric—­some deep note of loneliness—­would touch her heart, and rouse her pity.  He talked generally with an amazing confidence, not untouched perhaps with arrogance, of the political struggle before him; believed he should carry the country with him, and impose his policy on a divided party.  Yet again and again, amid the flow of hopeful speculation, Diana became aware, as on the first evening of Assisi, of some hidden and tragic doubt, both of fate and of himself, some deep-rooted weariness, against which the energy of his talk seemed to be perpetually reacting and protesting.  And the solitariness and meagreness of his life in all its personal and domestic aspects appalled her.  She saw him often as a great man—­a really great man—­yet starved and shelterless—­amid the storms that were beating up around him.

The friendship between him and Chide appeared to be very close, yet not a little surprising.  They were old comrades in Parliament, and Chide was in the main a whole-hearted supporter of Ferrier’s policy and views; resenting in particular, as Diana soon discovered, Marsham’s change of attitude.  But the two men had hardly anything else in common.  Ferrier was an enormous reader, most variously accomplished; while his political Whiggery was balanced by a restless scepticism in philosophy and religion.  For the rest he was an ascetic, even in the stream of London life; he cared nothing for most of the ordinary amusements; he played a vile hand at whist (bridge had not yet dawned upon a waiting world); he drank no wine, and was contentedly ignorant both of sport and games.

Chide, on the other hand, was as innocent of books as Lord Palmerston.  All that was necessary for his career as a great advocate he could possess himself of in the twinkling of an eye; his natural judgment and acuteness were of the first order; his powers of eloquence among the most famous of his time; but it is doubtful whether Lady Niton would have found him much better informed about the politics of her youth than Barton himself; Sir James, too, was hazy about Louis Philippe, and could never remember, in the order of Prime Ministers, whether Canning or Lord Liverpool came first.  With this, he was a simple and devout Catholic; loved on his holiday to serve the mass of some poor priest in a mountain valley; and had more than once been known to carry off some lax Catholic junior on his circuit to the performance of his Easter duties, willy-nilly—­by a mixture of magnetism and authority.  For all games of chance he had a perfect passion; would play whist all night, and conduct a case magnificently all day.  And although he was no sportsman in the ordinary sense, having had no opportunities in a very penurious youth, he had an Irishman’s love of horseflesh, and knew the Derby winners from the beginning with as much accuracy as Macaulay knew the Senior Wranglers.