‘How brutal men can be!’ was one of Diana’s incidental remarks, in a subsequent letter, relating simply to masculine habits.  In those days the famous ancestral plea of ‘the passion for his charmer’ had not been altogether socially quashed down among the provinces, where the bottle maintained a sort of sway, and the beauty which inflamed the sons of men was held to be in coy expectation of violent effects upon their boiling blood.  There were, one hears that there still are, remnants of the pristine male, who, if resisted in their suing, conclude that they are scorned, and it infuriates them:  some also whose ’passion for the charmer’ is an instinct to pull down the standard of the sex, by a bully imposition of sheer physical ascendancy, whenever they see it flying with an air of gallant independence:  and some who dedicate their lives to a study of the arts of the Lord Of Reptiles, until they have worked the crisis for a display of him in person.  Assault or siege, they have achieved their triumphs; they have dominated a frailer system of nerves, and a young woman without father, or brother, or husband, to defend her, is cryingly a weak one, therefore inviting to such an order of heroes.  Lady Dunstane was quick-witted and had a talkative husband; she knew a little of the upper social world of her time.  She was heartily glad to have Diana by her side again.

Not a word of any serious experience was uttered.  Only on one occasion while they conversed, something being mentioned of her tolerance, a flush of swarthy crimson shot over Diana, and she frowned, with the outcry ’Oh!  I have discovered that I can be a tigress!’

Her friend pressed her hand, saying, ‘The cause a good one!’

‘Women have to fight.’

Diana said no more.  There had been a bad experience of her isolated position in the world.

Lady Dunstane now indulged a partial hope that Mr. Redworth might see in this unprotected beautiful girl a person worthy of his esteem.  He had his opportunities, and evidently he liked her.  She appeared to take more cordially to him.  She valued the sterling nature of the man.  But they were a hopeless couple, they were so friendly.  Both ladies noticed in him an abstractedness of look, often when conversing, as of a man in calculation; they put it down to an ambitious mind.  Yet Diana said then, and said always, that it was he who had first taught her the art of observing.  On the whole, the brilliant marriage seemed a fairer prospect for her; how reasonable to anticipate, Lady Dunstane often thought when admiring the advance of Diana’s beauty in queenliness, for never did woman carry her head more grandly, more thrillingly make her presence felt; and if only she had been an actress showing herself nightly on a London stage, she would before now have met the superb appreciation, melancholy to reflect upon!