They were ignorant of his autumnal visit to the Italian Lakes, after the winter’s Nile-boat expedition; and also of the degree of his recent intimacy with Mrs. Warwick; or else, as he knew, he would have heard more hissing things.  Her patronage of Miss Paynham exposed her to attacks where she was deemed vulnerable; Lady Dacier muttered old saws as to the flocking of birds; he did not accurately understand it, thought it indiscreet, at best.  But in regard to his experience, he could tell himself that a woman more guileless of luring never drew breath.  On the contrary, candour said it had always been he who had schemed and pressed for the meeting.  He was at liberty to do it, not being bound in honour elsewhere.  Besides, despite his acknowledgement of her beauty, Mrs. Warwick was not quite his ideal of the perfectly beautiful woman.

Constance Asper came nearer to it.  He had the English taste for red and white, and for cold outlines:  he secretly admired a statuesque demeanour with a statue’s eyes.  The national approbation of a reserved haughtiness in woman, a tempered disdain in her slightly lifted small upperlip and drooped eyelids, was shared by him; and Constance Asper, if not exactly aristocratic by birth, stood well for that aristocratic insular type, which seems to promise the husband of it a casket of all the trusty virtues, as well as the security of frigidity in the casket.  Such was Dacier’s native taste; consequently the attractions of Diana Warwick for him were, he thought, chiefly mental, those of a Lady Egeria.  She might or might not be good, in the vulgar sense.  She was an agreeable woman, an amusing companion, very suggestive, inciting, animating; and her past history must be left as her own.  Did it matter to him?  What he saw was bright, a silver crescent on the side of the shadowy ring.  Were it a question of marrying her!—­That was out of the possibilities.  He remembered, moreover, having heard from a man, who professed to know, that Mrs. Warwick had started in married life by treating her husband cavalierly to an intolerable degree:  ‘Such as no Englishman could stand,’ the portly old informant thundered, describing it and her in racy vernacular.  She might be a devil of a wife.  She was a pleasant friend; just the soft bit sweeter than male friends which gave the flavour of sex without the artful seductions.  He required them strong to move him.

He looked at last on the green walls of the Priory, scarcely supposing a fair watcher to be within; for the contrasting pale colours of dawn had ceased to quicken the brilliancy of the crescent, and summer daylight drowned it to fainter than a silver coin in water.  It lay dispieced like a pulled rag.  Eastward, over Surrey, stood the full rose of morning.  The Priory clock struck four.  When the summons of the bell had gained him admittance, and he heard that Mrs. Warwick had come in the night, he looked back through the doorway at the rosy colour, and congratulated