not much below the level of his own.  Why, are you unaware that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick versus Dannisburgh was old Dan Merion’s girl—­and his only child?  It is true; for a friend had it from a man who had it straight from Mr. Braddock, of the firm of Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in the action, who told him he could sit listening to her for hours, and that she was as innocent as day; a wonderful combination of a good woman and a clever woman and a real beauty.  Only her misfortune was to have a furiously jealous husband, and they say he went mad after hearing the verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles.  A witty woman is such salt that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more than any of the absent, the dowering heavens not having yet showered her like very plentifully upon us.  Then it was first heard that Percy Dacier had been travelling with her.  Miss Asper heard of it.  Her uncle, Mr. Quintin Manx, the millionnaire, was an acquaintance of the new Judge and titled dignitary, Sir Cramborne Wathin, and she visited Lady Wathin, at whose table the report in the journals of the Nile-boat party was mentioned.  Lady Wathin’s table could dispense with witty women, and, for that matter, witty men.  The intrusion of the spontaneous on the stereotyped would have clashed.  She preferred, as hostess, the old legal anecdotes sure of their laugh, and the citations from the manufactories of fun in the Press, which were current and instantly intelligible to all her guests.  She smiled suavely on an impromptu pun, because her experience of the humorous appreciation of it by her guests bade her welcome the upstart.  Nothing else impromptu was acceptable.  Mrs. Warwick therefore was not missed by Lady Wathin.  ‘I have met her,’ she said.  ’I confess I am not one of the fanatics about Mrs. Warwick.  She has a sort of skill in getting men to clamour.  If you stoop to tickle them, they will applaud.  It is a way of winning a reputation.’  When the ladies were separated from the gentlemen by the stream of Claret, Miss Asper heard Lady Wathin speak of Mrs. Warwick again.  An allusion to Lord Dannisburgh’s fit of illness in the House of Lords led to her saying that there was no doubt he had been fascinated, and that, in her opinion, Mrs. Warwick was a dangerous woman.  Sir Cramborne knew something of Mr. Warwick; ‘Poor man!’ she added.  A lady present put a question concerning Mrs. Warwick’s beauty.  ‘Yes,’ Lady Wathin said, ’she has good looks to aid her.  Judging from what I hear and have seen, her thirst is for notoriety.  Sooner or later we shall have her making a noise, you may be certain.  Yes, she has the secret of dressing well—­in the French style.’

A simple newspaper report of the expedition of a Nileboat party could stir the Powers to take her up and turn her on their wheel in this manner.