‘One of the truest.’

’Here are two, then, and your own good sense.  For I do not believe it to be a question of courage.’

‘He has commenced.  Let him carry it out,’ said Diana.

Her desperation could have added the cry—­And give me freedom!  That was the secret in her heart.  She had struck on the hope for the detested yoke to be broken at any cost.

’I decline to meet his charges.  I despise them.  If my friends have faith in me—­and they may!—­I want nothing more.’

‘Well, I won’t talk commonplaces about the world,’ said Redworth.  ’We can none of us afford to have it against us.  Consider a moment:  to your friends you are the Diana Merion they knew, and they will not suffer an injury to your good name without a struggle.  But if you fly?  You leave the dearest you have to the whole brunt of it.

‘They will, if they love me.’

‘They will.  But think of the shock to her.  Lady Dunstane reads you—­’

‘Not quite.  No, not if she even wishes me to stay!’ said Diana.

He was too intent on his pleading to perceive a signification.

‘She reads you as clearly in the dark as if you were present with her.’

‘Oh! why am I not ten years older!’ Diana cried, and tried to face round to him, and stopped paralyzed.  ’Ten years older, I could discuss my situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend myself.’

‘And then you would not dream of flight before it!’

’No, she does not read me:  no!  She saw that I might come to The Crossways.  She—­no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof, in contempt of this baseness.’

’And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest.  Her strength will not support it.’

‘Emma!  Oh, cruel!’ Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs.  She dropped on another chair.  ’Go I must, I cannot turn back.  She saw my old attachment to this place.  It was not difficult to guess . . .  Who but I can see the wisest course for me!’

’It comes to this, that the blow aimed at you in your absence will strike her, and mortally,’ said Redworth.

‘Then I say it is terrible to have a friend,’ said Diana, with her bosom heaving.

‘Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two.’

His unstressed observation hit a bell in her head, and set it reverberating.  She and Emma had spoken, written, the very words.  She drew forth her Emma’s letter from under her left breast, and read some half-blinded lines.

Redworth immediately prepared to leave her to her feelings—­trustier guides than her judgement in this crisis.

‘Adieu, for the night, Mrs. Warwick,’ he said, and was guilty of eulogizing the judgement he thought erratic for the moment.  ’Night is a calm adviser.  Let me presume to come again in the morning.  I dare not go back without you.’

She looked up.  As they faced together each saw that the other had passed through a furnace, scorching enough to him, though hers was the delicacy exposed.  The reflection had its weight with her during the night.