‘If you were with me, dear, you would have none of these annoyances,’ she said, pleading forlornly.

Diana smiled to herself.  ’No!  I should relapse into softness.  This life exactly suits my present temper.  My landlady is respectful and attentive; the little housemaid is a willing slave; Danvers does not despise them pugnaciously; they make a home for me, and I am learning daily.  Do you know, the less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the ignorance of others—­I love them for it.’  She squeezed Emma’s hand with more meaning than her friend apprehended.  ’So I win my advantage from the trifles I have to endure.  They are really trifles, and I should once have thought them mountains!’

For the moment Diana stipulated that she might not have to encounter friends or others at Lady Dunstane’s dinner-table, and the season not being favourable to those gatherings planned by Lady Dunstane in her project of winning supporters, there was a respite, during which Sir Lukin worked manfully at his three Clubs to vindicate Diana’s name from the hummers and hawers, gaining half a dozen hot adherents, and a body of lukewarm, sufficiently stirred to be desirous to see the lady.  He worked with true champion zeal, although an interview granted him by the husband settled his opinion as to any possibility of the two ever coming to terms.  Also it struck him that if he by misadventure had been a woman and the wife of such a fellow, by Jove! . . .his apostrophe to the father of the gods of pagandom signifying the amount of matter Warwick would have had reason to complain of in earnest.  By ricochet his military mind rebounded from his knowledge of himself to an ardent, faith in Mrs. Warwick’s innocence; for, as there was no resemblance between them, there must, he deduced, be a difference in their capacity for enduring the perpetual company of a prig, a stick, a petrified poser.  Moreover, the novel act of advocacy, and the nature of the advocacy, had effect on him.  And then he recalled the scene in the winter beech-woods, and Diana’s wild-deer eyes; her, perfect generosity to a traitor and fool.  How could he have doubted her?  Glimpses of the corrupting cause for it partly penetrated his density:  a conqueror of ladies, in mid-career, doubts them all.  Of course he had meant no harm, nothing worse than some petty philandering with the loveliest woman of her time.  And, by Jove! it was worth the rebuff to behold the Beauty in her wrath.

The reflections of Lothario, however much tending tardily to do justice to a particular lady, cannot terminate wholesomely.  But he became a gallant partisan.  His portrayal of Mr. Warwick to his wife and his friends was fine caricature.  ’The fellow had his hand up at my first word—­stood like a sentinel under inspection.  “Understand, Sir Lukin, that I receive you simply as an acquaintance.  As an intermediary, permit me to state that you are taking superfluous trouble.  The case must proceed.