‘Oh! why am I not ten years older!’ Diana cried, and tried to face round to him, and stopped paralyzed.  ’Ten years older, I could discuss my situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend myself.’

‘And then you would not dream of flight before it!’

’No, she does not read me:  no!  She saw that I might come to The Crossways.  She—­no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof, in contempt of this baseness.’

’And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest.  Her strength will not support it.’

‘Emma!  Oh, cruel!’ Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs.  She dropped on another chair.  ’Go I must, I cannot turn back.  She saw my old attachment to this place.  It was not difficult to guess . . .  Who but I can see the wisest course for me!’

’It comes to this, that the blow aimed at you in your absence will strike her, and mortally,’ said Redworth.

‘Then I say it is terrible to have a friend,’ said Diana, with her bosom heaving.

‘Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two.’

His unstressed observation hit a bell in her head, and set it reverberating.  She and Emma had spoken, written, the very words.  She drew forth her Emma’s letter from under her left breast, and read some half-blinded lines.

Redworth immediately prepared to leave her to her feelings—­trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis.

‘Adieu, for the night, Mrs. Warwick,’ he said, and was guilty of eulogizing the judgement he thought erratic for the moment.  ’Night is a calm adviser.  Let me presume to come again in the morning.  I dare not go back without you.’

She looked up.  As they faced together each saw that the other had passed through a furnace, scorching enough to him, though hers was the delicacy exposed.  The reflection had its weight with her during the night.

‘Danvers is getting ready a bed for you; she is airing linen,’ Diana, said.  But the bed was declined, and the hospitality was not pressed.  The offer of it seemed to him significant of an unwary cordiality and thoughtlessness of tattlers that might account possibly for many things—­ supposing a fool or madman, or malignants, to interpret them.

‘Then, good night,’ said she.

They joined hands.  He exacted no promise that she would be present in the morning to receive him; and it was a consolation to her desire for freedom, until she reflected on the perfect confidence it implied, and felt as a quivering butterfly impalpably pinned.

CHAPTER X

THE CONFLICT OF THE NIGHT

Her brain was a steam-wheel throughout the night; everything that could be thought of was tossed, nothing grasped.

The unfriendliness of the friends who sought to retain her recurred.  For look—­to fly could not be interpreted as a flight.  It was but a stepping aside, a disdain of defending herself, and a wrapping herself in her dignity.  Women would be with her.  She called on the noblest of them to justify the course she chose, and they did, in an almost audible murmur.