‘Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution,’ said Diana.

‘But tell me,’ Lady Dunstane inquired generally, ’why men are so much happier than women in laughing at their spouses?’

They are humaner, was one dictum; they are more frivolous, ironically another.

’It warrants them for blowing the bugle-horn of masculine superiority night and morning from the castle-walls,’ Diana said.

’I should imagine it is for joy of heart that they still have cause to laugh!’ said Westlake.

On the other hand, are women really pained by having to laugh at their lords?  Curious little speeches flying about the great world, affirmed the contrary.  But the fair speakers were chartered libertines, and their laugh admittedly had a biting acid.  The parasite is concerned in the majesty of the tree.

‘We have entered Botany Bay,’ Diana said to Emma; who answered:  ’A metaphor is the Deus ex machine, of an argument’; and Whitmonby, to lighten a shadow of heaviness, related allusively an anecdote of the Law Courts.  Sullivan Smith begged permission to ‘black cap’ it with Judge FitzGerald’s sentence upon a convicted criminal:  ’Your plot was perfect but for One above.’  Dacier cited an execrable impromptu line of the Chief of the Opposition in Parliament.  The Premier, it was remarked, played him like an angler his fish on the hook; or say, Mr. Serjeant Rufus his witness in the box.

‘Or a French journalist an English missionary,’ said Westlake; and as the instance was recent it was relished.

The talk of Premiers offered Whitmonby occasion for a flight to the Court of Vienna and Kaunitz.  Wilmers told a droll story of Lord Busby’s missing the Embassy there.  Westlake furnished a sample of the tranquil sententiousness of Busby’s brother Robert during a stormy debate in the House of Commons.

‘I remember,’ Dacier was reminded, ’hearing him say, when the House resembled a Chartist riot, “Let us stand aside and meditate on Life.  If Youth could know, in the season of its reaping of the Pleasures, that it is but sowing Doctor’s bills!"’

Latterly a malady had supervened, and Bob Busby had retired from the universal to the special;—­his mysterious case.

’Assure him, that is endemic.  He may be cured of his desire for the exposition of it,’ said Lady Dunstane.

Westlake chimed with her:  ’Yes, the charm in discoursing of one’s case is over when the individual appears no longer at odds with Providence.’

‘But then we lose our Tragedy,’ said Whitmonby.

‘Our Comedy too,’ added Diana.  ’We must consent to be Busbied for the sake of the instructive recreations.’

‘A curious idea, though,’ said Sullivan Smith, ’that some of the grand instructive figures were in their day colossal bores!’

‘So you see the marvel of the poet’s craft at last?’ Diana smiled on him, and he vowed:  ‘I’ll read nothing else for a month!’ Young Rhodes bade him beware of a deluge in proclaiming it.