The report of the dog was a fact.  He arrived one morning at Diana’s lodgings, with a soldier to lead him, and a card to introduce:—­the Hercules of dogs, a very ideal of the species, toweringly big, benevolent, reputed a rescuer of lives, disdainful of dog-fighting, devoted to his guardian’s office, with a majestic paw to give and the noblest satisfaction in receiving caresses ever expressed by mortal male enfolded about the head, kissed, patted, hugged, snuggled, informed that he was his new mistress’s one love and darling.

She despatched a thrilling note of thanks to Lord Larrian, sure of her touch upon an Irish heart.

The dog Leander soon responded to the attachment of a mistress enamoured of him.  ‘He is my husband,’ she said to Emma, and started a tear in the eyes of her smiling friend; ’he promises to trust me, and never to have the law of me, and to love my friends as his own; so we are certain to agree.’  In rain, snow, sunshine, through the parks and the streets, he was the shadow of Diana, commanding, on the whole, apart from some desperate attempts to make him serve as introducer, a civilized behaviour in the legions of Cupid’s footpads.  But he helped, innocently enough, to create an enemy.

CHAPTER XIV

Giving glimpses of Diana under her cloud before the world and of her further apprenticeship

As the day of her trial became more closely calculable, Diana’s anticipated alarms receded with the deadening of her heart to meet the shock.  She fancied she had put on proof-armour, unconscious that it was the turning of the inward flutterer to steel, which supplied her cuirass and shield.  The necessity to brave society, in the character of honest Defendant, caused but a momentary twitch of the nerves.  Her heart beat regularly, like a serviceable clock; none of her faculties abandoned her save songfulness, and none belied her, excepting a disposition to tartness almost venomous in the sarcastic shafts she let fly at friends interceding with Mr. Warwick to spare his wife, when she had determined to be tried.  A strange fit of childishness overcame her powers of thinking, and was betrayed in her manner of speaking, though—­to herself her dwindled humour allowed her to appear the towering Britomart.  She pouted contemptuously on hearing that a Mr. Sullivan Smith (a remotely recollected figure) had besought Mr. Warwick for an interview, and gained it, by stratagem, ‘to bring the man to his senses’:  but an ultra-Irishman did not compromise her battle-front, as the busybody supplications of a personal friend like Mr. Redworth did; and that the latter, without consulting her, should be ’one of the plaintive crew whining about the heels of the Plaintiff for a mercy she disdained and rejected’ was bitter to her taste.