Dacier thought of the Persian Queen crying for news of the slaughtered, with her mind on her lord and husband:  ‘Who is not dead?’ Diana exalted poets, and here was an example of the truth of one to nature, and of the poor husband’s depth of feeling.  They said not the same thing, but it was the same cry de profundis.

He saw Redworth coming at a quick pace.

Redworth raised his hand.  Sir Lukin stopped.  ‘He’s waving!’

‘It’s good,’ said Dacier.

‘Speak! are you sure?’

‘I judge by the look.’

Redworth stepped unfalteringly.

‘It’s over, all well,’ he said.  He brushed his forehead and looked sharply cheerful.

‘My dear fellow! my dear fellow!’ Sir Lukin grasped his hand.  ’It’s more than I deserve.  Over?  She has borne it!  She would have gone to heaven and left me!

Is she safe?’

‘Doing well.’

‘Have you seen the surgeons?’

‘Mrs. Warwick.’

‘What did she say?’

‘A nod of the head.’

‘You saw her?’

‘She came to the stairs.’

’Diana Warwick never lies.  She wouldn’t lie, not with a nod!  They’ve saved Emmy—­do you think?’

‘It looks well.’

My girl has passed the worst of it?’

‘That’s over.’

Sir Lukin gazed glassily.  The necessity of his agony was to lean to the belief, at a beckoning, that Providence pardoned him, in tenderness for what would have been his loss.  He realized it, and experienced a sudden calm:  testifying to the positive pardon.

‘Now, look here, you two fellows, listen half a moment,’ he addressed Redworth and Dacier; ’I’ve been the biggest scoundrel of a husband unhung, and married to a saint; and if she’s only saved to me; I’ll swear to serve her faithfully, or may a thunderbolt knock me to perdition! and thank God for his justice!  Prayers are answered, mind you, though a fellow may be as black as a sweep.  Take a warning from me.  I’ve had my lesson.’

Dacier soon after talked of going.  The hope of seeing Diana had abandoned him, the desire was almost extinct.

Sir Lukin could not let him go.  He yearned to preach to him or any one from his personal text of the sinner honourably remorseful on account of and notwithstanding the forgiveness of Providence, and he implored Dacier and Redworth by turns to be careful when they married of how they behaved to—­the sainted women their wives; never to lend ear to the devil, nor to believe, as he had done, that there is no such thing as a devil, for he had been the victim of him, and he knew.  The devil, he loudly proclaimed, has a multiplicity of lures, and none more deadly than when he baits with a petticoat.  He had been hooked, and had found the devil in person.  He begged them urgently to keep his example in memory.  By following this and that wildfire he had stuck himself in a bog—­a common result with those who