These were the meditations of a man in love; veins, arteries, headpiece in love, and constantly brooding at a solitary height over the beautiful coveted object; only too bewildered by her multifarious evanescent feminine evasions, as of colours on a ruffle water, to think of pouncing for he could do nothing to soften, nothing that seemed to please her:  and all the while, the motive of her mind impelled him in reflection beyond practicable limits:  even pointing him to apt quotations!  Either he thought within her thoughts, or his own were at her disposal.  Nor was it sufficient for him to be sensible of her influence, to restrain the impetus he took from her.  He had already wedded her morally, and much that he did, as well as whatever he debated, came of Diana; more than if they had been coupled, when his downright practical good sense could have spoken.  She held him suspended, swaying him in that posture; and he was not a whit ashamed of it.  The beloved woman was throned on the very highest of the man.

Furthermore, not being encouraged, he had his peculiar reason for delay, though now he could offer her wealth.  She had once in his hearing derided the unpleasant hiss of the ungainly English matron’s title of Mrs. There was no harm in the accustomed title, to his taste; but she disliking it, he did the same, on her special behalf; and the prospect, funereally draped, of a title sweeter-sounding to her ears, was above his horizon.  Bear in mind, that he underwent the reverse of encouragement.  Any small thing to please her was magnified, and the anticipation of it nerved the modest hopes of one who deemed himself and any man alive deeply her inferior.

Such was the mood of the lover condemned to hear another malignant scandal defiling the name of the woman he worshipped.  Sir Lukin Dunstane, extremely hurried, bumped him on the lower step of the busy Bank, and said: 

‘Pardon!’ and ‘Ha!  Redwarth! making money?’

‘Why, what are you up to down here?’ he was asked, and he answered:  ’Down to the Tower, to an officer quartered there.  Not bad quarters, but an infernal distance.  Business.’

Having cloaked his expedition to the distance with the comprehensive word, he repeated it; by which he feared he had rendered it too significant, and he said:  ‘No, no; nothing particular’; and that caused the secret he contained to swell in his breast rebelliously, informing the candid creature of the fact of his hating to lie:  whereupon thus he poured himself out, in the quieter bustle of an alley, off the main thoroughfare.  ’You’re a friend of hers.  I ’m sure you care for her reputation; you ’re an old friend of hers, and she’s my wife’s dearest friend; and I’m fond of her too; and I ought to be, and ought to know, and do know:—­pure?  Strike off my fist if there’s a spot on her character!  And a scoundrel like that fellow Wroxeter!  Damnedest rage I ever was in!—­Swears . . . down at Lockton . . . when she was a girl.  Why, Redworth, I can tell you, when Diana Warwick was a girl!’