Mrs. Warwick’s maid in the encouragement of her follower.  Miss Paynham sketched on, with her thoughts in her bosom:  a damsel castigatingly pursued by the idea of sex as the direct motive of every act of every person surrounding, her; deductively therefore that a certain form of the impelling passion, mild or terrible, or capricious, or it might be less pardonable, was unceasingly at work among the human couples up to decrepitude.  And she too frequently hit the fact to doubt her gift of reading into them.  Mr. Dacier was plain, and the state of young Mr. Rhodes; and the Scottish gentleman was at least a vehement admirer.  But she penetrated the breast of Mr. Thomas Redworth as well, mentally tore his mask of friendship to shreds.  He was kind indeed in commissioning her to do the portrait.  His desire for it, and his urgency to have the features exactly given, besides the infrequency of his visits of late, when a favoured gentleman was present, were the betraying signs.  Deductively, moreover, the lady who inspired the passion in numbers of gentlemen and set herself to win their admiration with her lively play of dialogue, must be coquettish; she could hold them only by coldness.  Anecdotes, epigrams, drolleries, do not bubble to the lips of a woman who is under an emotional spell:  rather they prove that she has the spell for casting.  It suited Mr. Dacier, Miss Paynham thought:  it was cruel to Mr. Redworth; at whom, of all her circle, the beautiful woman looked, when speaking to him, sometimes tenderly.

‘Beware the silent one of an assembly!’ Diana had written.  She did not think of her words while Miss Paynham continued mutely sketching.  The silent ones, with much conversation around them, have their heads at work, critically perforce; the faster if their hands are occupied; and the point they lean to do is the pivot of their thoughts.  Miss Paynham felt for Mr. Redworth.

Diana was unaware of any other critic present than him she sought to enliven, not unsuccessfully, notwithstanding his English objection to the pitch of the converse she led, and a suspicion of effort to support it:—­just a doubt, with all her easy voluble run, of the possibility of naturalness in a continuous cleverness.  But he signified pleasure, and in pleasing him she was happy:  in the knowledge that she dazzled, was her sense of safety.  Percy hated scandal; he heard none.  He wanted stirring, cheering; in her house he had it.  He came daily, and as it was her wish that new themes, new flights of converse, should delight him and show her exhaustless, to preserve her ascendancy, she welcomed him without consulting the world.  He was witness of Mr. Hepburn’s presentation of a costly China vase, to repair the breach in her array of ornaments, and excuse a visit.  Judging by the absence of any blow within, he saw not a sign of coquettry.  Some such visit had been anticipated by the prescient woman, so there was no reddening.  She brought about an exchange of sentences between him and her furious admirer, sparing either of them a glimpse of which was the sacrifice to the other, amusing them both.  Dacier could allow Mr. Hepburn to outsit him; and he left them, proud of his absolute confidence in her.