Is she safe?’

‘Doing well.’

‘Have you seen the surgeons?’

‘Mrs. Warwick.’

‘What did she say?’

‘A nod of the head.’

‘You saw her?’

‘She came to the stairs.’

’Diana Warwick never lies.  She wouldn’t lie, not with a nod!  They’ve saved Emmy—­do you think?’

‘It looks well.’

My girl has passed the worst of it?’

‘That’s over.’

Sir Lukin gazed glassily.  The necessity of his agony was to lean to the belief, at a beckoning, that Providence pardoned him, in tenderness for what would have been his loss.  He realized it, and experienced a sudden calm:  testifying to the positive pardon.

‘Now, look here, you two fellows, listen half a moment,’ he addressed Redworth and Dacier; ’I’ve been the biggest scoundrel of a husband unhung, and married to a saint; and if she’s only saved to me; I’ll swear to serve her faithfully, or may a thunderbolt knock me to perdition! and thank God for his justice!  Prayers are answered, mind you, though a fellow may be as black as a sweep.  Take a warning from me.  I’ve had my lesson.’

Dacier soon after talked of going.  The hope of seeing Diana had abandoned him, the desire was almost extinct.

Sir Lukin could not let him go.  He yearned to preach to him or any one from his personal text of the sinner honourably remorseful on account of and notwithstanding the forgiveness of Providence, and he implored Dacier and Redworth by turns to be careful when they married of how they behaved to—­the sainted women their wives; never to lend ear to the devil, nor to believe, as he had done, that there is no such thing as a devil, for he had been the victim of him, and he knew.  The devil, he loudly proclaimed, has a multiplicity of lures, and none more deadly than when he baits with a petticoat.  He had been hooked, and had found the devil in person.  He begged them urgently to keep his example in memory.  By following this and that wildfire he had stuck himself in a bog—­a common result with those who would not see the devil at work upon them; and it required his dear suffering saint to be at death’s doors, cut to pieces and gasping, to open his eyes.  But, thank heaven, they were opened at last!  Now he saw the beast he was:  a filthy beast! unworthy of tying his wife’s shoestring.  No confessions could expose to them the beast he was.  But let them not fancy there was no such thing as an active devil about the world.

Redworth divined that the simply sensational man abased himself before Providence and heaped his gratitude on the awful Power in order to render it difficult for the promise of the safety of his wife to be withdrawn.

He said:  ‘There is good hope’; and drew an admonition upon himself.