So they wore through the Session and the Autumn, clouds heavier, the League drumming, the cry of Ireland ‘ominously Banshee,’ as she wrote to Emma.

CHAPTER XXX

IN WHICH THERE IS A TASTE OF A LITTLE DINNER AND AN AFTERTASTE

‘But Tony lives!’ Emma Dunstane cried, on her solitary height, with the full accent of envy marking the verb; and when she wrote enviously to her friend of the life among bright intelligences, and of talk worth hearing, it was a happy signification that health, frail though it might be, had grown importunate for some of the play of life.  Diana sent her word to name her day, and she would have her choicest to meet her dearest.  They were in the early days of December, not the best of times for improvized gatherings.  Emma wanted, however, to taste them as they cropped; she was also, owing to her long isolation, timid at a notion of encountering the pick of the London world, prepared by Tony to behold ’a wonder more than worthy of them,’ as her friend unadvisedly wrote.  That was why she came unexpectedly, and for a mixture of reasons, went to an hotel.  Fatality designed it so.  She was reproached, but she said:  ’You have to write or you entertain at night; I should be a clog and fret you.  My hotel is Maitland’s; excellent; I believe I am to lie on the pillow where a crowned head reposed!  You will perceive that I am proud as well as comfortable.  And I would rather meet your usual set of guests.’

’The reason why I have been entertaining at night is, that Percy is harassed and requires enlivening,’ said Diana.  ’He brings his friends.  My house is open to them, if it amuses him.  What the world says, is past a thought.  I owe him too much.’

Emma murmured that the world would soon be pacified.

Diana shook her head.  ’The poor man is better; able to go about his affairs; and I am honestly relieved.  It lays a spectre.  As for me, I do not look ahead.  I serve as a kind of secretary to Percy.  I labour at making abstracts by day, and at night preside at my suppertable.  You would think it monotonous; no incident varies the course we run.  I have no time to ask whether it is happiness.  It seems to bear a resemblance.’

Emma replied:  ’He may be everything you tell me.  He should not have chosen the last night of the Opera to go to your box and sit beside you till the fall of the curtain.  The presence at the Opera of a man notoriously indifferent to music was enough in itself.’

Diana smiled with languor.  ’You heard of that?  But the Opera was The Puritani, my favourite.  And he saw me sitting in Lady Pennon’s box alone.  We were compromised neck-deep already.  I can kiss you, my own Emmy, till I die; ’but what the world says, is what the wind says.  Besides he has his hopes....  If I am blackened ever so thickly, he can make me white.  Dear me! if the world knew that he comes here almost nightly!  It will; and does it matter?  I am his in soul; the rest is waste-paper—­a half-printed sheet.’