’Tony calls the social world “the theatre of appetites,” as we have it at present,’ she said; ’and the world at a wedding is, one may reckon, in the second act of the hungry tragicomedy.’

‘Yes, there’s the breakfast,’ Sir Lukin assented.  Mrs. Fryar-Gunnett was much more intelligible to him:  in fact, quite so, as to her speech.

Emma’s heart now yearned to her Tony:  Consulting her strength, she thought she might journey to London, and on the third morning after the Dacier-Asper marriage, she started.

Diana’s door was open to Arthur Rhodes when Emma reached it.

‘Have you seen her?’ she asked him.

His head shook dolefully.  ’Mrs. Warwick is unwell; she has been working too hard.’

‘You also, I’m afraid.’

‘No.’  He could deny that, whatever the look of him.

‘Come to me at Copsley soon,’ said she, entering to Danvers in the passage.

‘My mistress is upstairs, my lady,’ said Danvers.  ’She is lying on her bed.’

‘She is ill?’

‘She has been lying on her bed ever since.’

‘Since what?’ Lady Dunstane spoke sharply.

Danvers retrieved her indiscretion.  ’Since she heard of the accident, my lady.’

‘Take my name to her.  Or no:  I can venture.’

’I am not allowed to go in and speak to her.  You will find the room quite dark, my lady, and very cold.  It is her command.  My mistress will not let me light the fire; and she has not eaten or drunk of anything since . . . .  She will die, if you do not persuade her to take nourishment:  a little, for a beginning.  It wants the beginning.’

Emma went upstairs, thinking of the enigmatical maid, that she must be a good soul after all.  Diana’s bedroom door was opened slowly.

‘You will not be able to see at first, my lady,’ Danvers whispered.  ’The bed is to the left, and a chair.  I would bring in a candle, but it hurts her eyes.  She forbids it.’

Emma stepped in.  The chill thick air of the unlighted London room was cavernous.  She almost forgot the beloved of her heart in the thought that a living woman had been lying here more than two days and nights, fasting.  The proof of an uttermost misery revived the circumstances within her to render her friend’s presence in this desert of darkness credible.  She found the bed by touch, silently, and distinguished a dark heap on the bed; she heard no breathing.  She sat and listened; then she stretched out her hand and met her Tony’s.  It lay open.  It was the hand of a drowned woman.

Shutters and curtains and the fireless grate gave the room an appalling likeness to the vaults.

So like to the home of death it seemed, that in a few minutes the watcher had lost count of time and kept but a wormy memory of the daylight.  She dared not speak, for some fear of startling; for the worse fear of never getting answer.  Tony’s hand was lifeless.  Her clasp of it struck no warmth.