’I was getting an exalted idea of English gentlemen, Emmy.  “Rich and rare were the gems she wore.”  I was ready to vow that one might traverse the larger island similarly respected.  I praised their chivalry.  I thought it a privilege to live in such a land.  I cannot describe to you how delightful it was to me to walk out and home generally protected.  I might have been seriously annoyed but that one of the clerks-"articled,” he called himself—­of our lawyers happened to be by.  He offered to guard me, and was amusing with his modest tiptoe air.  No, I trust to the English common man more than ever.  He is a man of honour.  I am convinced he is matchless in any other country, except Ireland.  The English gentleman trades on his reputation.’

He was condemned by an afflicted delicacy, the sharpest of critical tribunals.

Emma bade her not to be too sweeping from a bad example.

‘It is not a single one,’ said Diana.  ’What vexes me and frets me is, that I must be a prisoner, or allow Danvers to mount guard.  And I can’t see the end of it.  And Danvers is no magician.  She seems to know her countrymen, though.  She warded one of them off, by saying to me:  “This is the crossing, my lady.”  He fled.’

Lady Dunstane affixed the popular title to the latter kind of gentleman.  She was irritated on her friend’s behalf, and against the worrying of her sisterhood, thinking in her heart, nevertheless, that the passing of a face and figure like Diana’s might inspire honourable emotions, pitiable for being hapless.

‘If you were with me, dear, you would have none of these annoyances,’ she said, pleading forlornly.

Diana smiled to herself.  ’No!  I should relapse into softness.  This life exactly suits my present temper.  My landlady is respectful and attentive; the little housemaid is a willing slave; Danvers does not despise them pugnaciously; they make a home for me, and I am learning daily.  Do you know, the less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the ignorance of others—­I love them for it.’  She squeezed Emma’s hand with more meaning than her friend apprehended.  ’So I win my advantage from the trifles I have to endure.  They are really trifles, and I should once have thought them mountains!’

For the moment Diana stipulated that she might not have to encounter friends or others at Lady Dunstane’s dinner-table, and the season not being favourable to those gatherings planned by Lady Dunstane in her project of winning supporters, there was a respite, during which Sir Lukin worked manfully at his three Clubs to vindicate Diana’s name from the hummers and hawers, gaining half a dozen hot adherents, and a body of lukewarm, sufficiently stirred to be desirous to see the lady.  He worked with true champion zeal, although an interview granted him by the husband settled his opinion as to any possibility of the two ever coming to terms.  Also it struck him that if he by misadventure had been a woman and the wife