‘This is the creature you try to excuse!’ exclaimed indignant Emma.

’Yes, because—­but fancy all the smart things I said being called my “sallies"!—­can a woman live with it?—­because I behaved . . .  I despised him too much, and I showed it.  He is not a contemptible man before the world; he is merely a very narrow one under close inspection.  I could not—­or did not—­conceal my feeling.  I showed it not only to him, to my friend.  Husband grew to mean to me stifler, lung-contractor, iron mask, inquisitor, everything anti-natural.  He suffered under my “sallies”:  and it was the worse for him when he did not perceive their drift.  He is an upright man; I have not seen marked meanness.  One might build up a respectable figure in negatives.  I could add a row of noughts to the single number he cherishes, enough to make a millionnaire of him; but strike away the first, the rest are wind.  Which signifies, that if you do not take his estimate of himself, you will think little of his:  negative virtues.  He is not eminently, that is to say, not saliently, selfish; not rancorous, not obtrusive—­tata-ta-ta.  But dull!—­dull as a woollen nightcap over eyes and ears and mouth.  Oh! an executioner’s black cap to me.  Dull, and suddenly staring awake to the idea of his honour.  I “rendered” him ridiculous—­I had caught a trick of “using men’s phrases.”  Dearest, now that the day of trial draws nigh—­you have never questioned me, and it was like you to spare me pain—­but now I can speak of him and myself.’  Diana dropped her voice.  Here was another confession.  The proximity of the trial acted like fire on her faded recollection of incidents.  It may be that partly the shame of alluding to them had blocked her woman’s memory.  For one curious operation of the charge of guiltiness upon the nearly guiltless is to make them paint themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots, until the whiteness being acknowledged, or the ordeal imminent, the spots recur and press upon their consciences.  She resumed, in a rapid undertone:  ’You know that a certain degree of independence had been, if not granted by him, conquered by me.  I had the habit of it.  Obedience with him is imprisonment—­he is a blind wall.  He received a commission, greatly to his advantage, and was absent.  He seems to have received information of some sort.  He returned unexpectedly, at a late hour, and attacked me at once, middling violent.  My friend—­and that he is! was coming from the House for a ten minutes’ talk, as usual, on his way home, to refresh him after the long sitting and bear-baiting he had nightly to endure.  Now let me confess:  I grew frightened; Mr. Warwick was “off his head,” as they say-crazy, and I could not bear the thought of those two meeting.  While he raged I threw open the window and put the lamp near it, to expose the whole interior—­cunning as a veteran intriguer:  horrible, but it had to be done to keep them apart.