She, on her return to London, gained a considerable increase of knowledge as to her position in the eye of the world; and unlike the result of her meditations derived from the clamouring tradesmen, whom she could excuse, she was neither illuminated nor cautioned by that dubious look; she conscientiously revolted.  Lady Pennon hinted a word for her Government.  ’A good deal of what you so capitally call “Green tea talk” is going on, my dear.’  Diana replied, without pretending to misunderstand.

’Gossip is a beast of prey that does not wait for the death of the creature it devours.  They are welcome to my shadow, if the liberty I claim casts one, and it feeds them.’  To which the old lady rejoined:  ’Oh!  I am with you through thick and thin.  I presented you at Court, and I stand by you.  Only, walk carefully.  Women have to walk with a train.  You are too famous not to have your troops of watchers.’

‘But I mean to prove,’ said Diana, ’that a woman can walk with her train independent of the common reserves and artifices.’

‘Not on highways, my dear!’

Diana, praising the speaker, referred the whole truth in that to the material element of her metaphor.

She was more astonished by Whitmonby’s candid chiding; but with him she could fence, and men are easily diverted.  She had sent for him, to bring him and Percy Dacier together to a conference.  Unaware of the project, he took the opportunity of their privacy to speak of the great station open to her in London being imperilled; and he spoke of ‘tongues,’ and ahem!  A very little would have induced him to fill that empty vocable with a name.

She had to pardon the critic in him for an unpleasant review of her hapless cantatrice; and as a means of evasion, she mentioned the poor book and her slaughter of the heroine, that he had complained of.

’I killed her; I could not let her live.  You were unjust in accusing the authoress of heartlessness.’

‘If I did, I retract,’ said he.  ’She steers too evidently from the centre of the vessel.  She has the organ in excess.’

‘Proof that it is not squandered.’

‘The point concerns direction.’

‘Have I made so bad a choice of my friends?’

’It is the common error of the sprightly to suppose that in parrying a thrust they blind our eyes.’

‘The world sees always what it desires to see, Mr. Whitmonby.’

’The world, my dear Mrs. Warwick, is a blundering machine upon its own affairs, but a cruel sleuth-hound to rouse in pursuit.’

‘So now you have me chased by sight and scent.  And if I take wing?’

’Shots! volleys!—­You are lawful game.  The choice you have made of your friends, should oblige you to think of them.’

‘I imagine I do.  Have I offended any, or one?’

’I will not say that.  You know the commotion in a French kitchen when the guests of the house declined a particular dish furnished them by command.  The cook and his crew were loyal to their master, but, for the love of their Art, they sent him notice.  It is ill serving a mad sovereign.’