had closed on him; her feeling of lost sovereignty, degradation, feminine danger, friendliness:  and she was unaware, and never knew, nor did the world ever know, what cunning had inspired the frosty Cupid to return to her and be warmed by striking a bargain for his weighty secret.  She knew too well that she was not of the snows which do not melt, however high her conceit of herself might place her.  Happily she now stood out of the sun, in a bracing temperature, Polar; and her compassion for women was deeply sisterly in tenderness and understanding.  She spoke of it to Emma as her gain.

‘I have not seen that you required to suffer to be considerate,’ Emma said.

’It is on my conscience that I neglected Mary Paynham, among others—­and because you did not take to her, Emmy.’

‘The reading of it appears to me, that she has neglected you.’

’She was not in my confidence, and so I construe it as delicacy.  One never loses by believing the best.’

‘If one is not duped.’

’Expectations dupe us, not trust.  The light of every soul burns upward.  Of course, most of them are candles in the wind.  Let us allow for atmospheric disturbance.  Now I thank you, dear, for bringing me back to life.  I see that I was really a selfish suicide, because I feel I have power to do some good, and belong to the army.  When we are beginning to reflect, as I do now, on a recovered basis of pure health, we have the world at the dawn and know we are young in it, with great riches, great things gained and greater to achieve.  Personally I behold a queer little wriggling worm for myself; but as one, of the active world I stand high and shapely; and the very thought of doing work, is like a draught of the desert-springs to me.  Instead of which, I have once more to go about presenting my face to vindicate my character.  Mr. Redworth would admit no irony in that!  At all events, it is anti-climax.’

‘I forgot to tell you, Tony, you have been proposed for,’ said Emma; and there was a rush of savage colour over Tony’s cheeks.

Her apparent apprehensions were relieved by hearing the name of Mr. Sullivan Smith.

’My poor dear countryman!  And he thought me worthy, did he?  Some day, when we are past his repeating it, I’ll thank him.’

The fact of her smiling happily at the narration of Sullivan Smith’s absurd proposal by mediatrix, proved to Emma how much her nature thirsted for the smallest support in her self-esteem.

The second campaign of London was of bad augury at the commencement, owing to the ridiculous intervention of a street-organ, that ground its pipes in a sprawling roar of one of the Puritani marches, just as the carriage was landing them at the door of her house.  The notes were harsh, dissonant, drunken, interlocked and horribly torn asunder, intolerable to ears not keen to extract the tune through dreadful memories.  Diana sat startled and paralyzed.  The melody