‘A year or so since.’

‘When did you return from America?’

‘Two days back.’

‘And paid your visit to Copsley immediately?’

‘As early as I could.’

‘That was true friendliness.  You have a letter for me?’

‘I have.’

He put his hand to his pocket for the letter.

‘Presently,’ she said.  She divined the contents, and nursed her resolution to withstand them.  Danvers had brought firewood and coal.  Orders were given to her, and in spite of the opposition of the maid and intervention of the gentleman, Diana knelt at the grate, observing: 

‘Allow me to do this.  I can lay and light a fire.’

He was obliged to look on:  she was a woman who spoke her meaning.  She knelt, handling paper, firewood and matches, like a housemaid.  Danvers proceeded on her mission, and Redworth eyed Diana in the first fire-glow.  He could have imagined a Madonna on an old black Spanish canvas.

The act of service was beautiful in gracefulness, and her simplicity in doing the work touched it spiritually.  He thought, as she knelt there, that never had he seen how lovely and how charged with mystery her features were; the dark large eyes full on the brows; the proud line of a straight nose in right measure to the bow of the lips; reposeful red lips, shut, and their curve of the slumber-smile at the corners.  Her forehead was broad; the chin of a sufficient firmness to sustain:  that noble square; the brows marked by a soft thick brush to the temples; her black hair plainly drawn along her head to the knot, revealed by the mantilla fallen on her neck.

Elegant in plainness, the classic poet would have said of her hair and dress.  She was of the women whose wits are quick in everything they do.  That which was proper to her position, complexion, and the hour, surely marked her appearance.  Unaccountably this night, the fair fleshly presence over-weighted her intellectual distinction, to an observer bent on vindicating her innocence.  Or rather, he saw the hidden in the visible.

Owner of such a woman, and to lose her!  Redworth pitied the husband.

The crackling flames reddened her whole person.  Gazing, he remembered Lady Dunstane saying of her once, that in anger she had the nostrils of a war-horse.  The nostrils now were faintly alive under some sensitive impression of her musings.  The olive cheeks, pale as she stood in the doorway, were flushed by the fire-beams, though no longer with their swarthy central rose, tropic flower of a pure and abounding blood, as it had seemed.  She was now beset by battle.  His pity for her, and his eager championship, overwhelmed the spirit of compassion for the foolish wretched husband.  Dolt, the man must be, Redworth thought; and he asked inwardly, Did the miserable tyrant suppose of a woman like this, that she would be content to shine as a candle in a grated lanthorn?  The generosity