‘Provided he is worthy of such devotion!’

’He is absolute worthiness.  He is the prince of men:  I dread to say, mine! for fear.  But Emmy will not judge him to-morrow by contrast with more voluble talkers.—­I can do anything but read poetry now.  That kills me!—­See him through me.  In nature, character, intellect, he has no rival.  Whenever I despond—­and it comes now and then—­I rebuke myself with this one admonition.

Simply to have known him!  Admit that for a woman to find one who is worthy among the opposite creatures, is a happy termination of her quest, and in some sort dismisses her to the Shades, an uncomplaining ferry-bird.  If my end were at hand I should have no cause to lament it.  We women miss life only when we have to confess we have never met the man to reverence.’

Emma had to hear a very great deal of Mr. Percy.  Diana’s comparison of herself to ‘the busy bee at a window-pane,’ was more in her old manner; and her friend would have hearkened to the marvels of the gentle man less unrefreshed, had it not appeared to her that her Tony gave in excess for what was given in return.  She hinted her view. . .

‘It is expected of our sex,’ Diana said.

The work of busy bee at a window-pane had at any rate not spoilt her beauty, though she had voluntarily, profitlessly, become this man’s drudge, and her sprightly fancy, her ready humour and darting look all round in discussion, were rather deadened.

But the loss was not perceptible in the circle of her guests.  Present at a dinner little indicating the last, were Whitmonby, in lively trim for shuffling, dealing, cutting, trumping or drawing trumps; Westlake, polishing epigrams under his eyelids; Henry Wilmers, who timed an anecdote to strike as the passing hour without freezing the current; Sullivan Smith, smoked, cured and ready to flavour; Percy Dacier, pleasant listener, measured speaker; and young Arthur Rhodes, the neophyte of the hostess’s training; of whom she had said to Emma, ’The dear boy very kindly serves to frank an unlicenced widow’; and whom she prompted and made her utmost of, with her natural tact.  These she mixed and leavened.  The talk was on high levels and low; an enchantment to Emma Dunstane:  now a story; a question opening new routes, sharp sketches of known personages; a paradox shot by laughter as soon as uttered; and all so smoothly; not a shadow of the dominant holder-forth or a momentary prospect of dead flats; the mellow ring of appositeness being the concordant note of deliveries running linked as they flashed, and a tolerant philosophy of the sage in the world recurrently the keynote.