’We are none of us better than you, dear Tony; only some are more fortunate, and many are cowards,’ Emma said.  ’You acted prudently in a wretched situation, partly of your own making, partly of the circumstances.  But a nature like yours could not sit still and moan.  That marriage was to blame!  The English notion of women seems to be that we are born white sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do with our colour.  They dread to grant distinctions, and to judge of us discerningly is beyond them.  Whether the fiction, that their homes are purer than elsewhere, helps to establish the fact, I do not know:  there is a class that does live honestly; and at any rate it springs from a liking for purity; but I am sure that their method of impressing it on women has the dangers of things artificial.  They narrow their understanding of human nature, and that is not the way to improve the breed.’

’I suppose we women are taken to be the second thoughts of the Creator; human nature’s fringes, mere finishing touches, not a part of the texture,’ said Diana; ’the pretty ornamentation.  However, I fancy I perceive some tolerance growing in the minds of the dominant sex.  Our old lawyer Mr. Braddock, who appears to have no distaste for conversations with me, assures me he expects the day to come when women will be encouraged to work at crafts and professions for their independence.  That is the secret of the opinion of us at present—­our dependency.  Give us the means of independence, and we will gain it, and have a turn at judging you, my lords!  You shall behold a world reversed.  Whenever I am distracted by existing circumstances, I lay my finger on the material conditions, and I touch the secret.  Individually, it may be moral with us; collectively, it is material-gross wrongs, gross hungers.  I am a married rebel, and thereof comes the social rebel.  I was once a dancing and singing girl:  You remember the night of the Dublin Ball.  A Channel sea in uproar, stirred by witches, flows between.’

‘You are as lovely as you were then—­I could say, lovelier,’ said Emma.

’I have unconquerable health, and I wish I could give you the half of it, dear.  I work late into the night, and I wake early and fresh in the morning.  I do not sing, that is all.  A few days more, and my character will be up before the Bull’s Head to face him in the arena.  The worst of a position like mine is, that it causes me incessantly to think and talk of myself.  I believe I think less than I talk, but the subject is growing stale; as those who are long dying feel, I dare say—­if they do not take it as the compensation for their departure.’

The Bull’s Head, or British Jury of Twelve, with the wig on it, was faced during the latter half of a week of good news.  First, Mr. Thomas Redworth was returned to Parliament by a stout majority for the Borough of Orrybridge:  the Hon. Percy Dacier delivered a brilliant speech in the House of Commons, necessarily pleasing to his uncle:  Lord Larrian obtained the command of the Rock:  the house of The Crossways was let to a tenant approved by Mr. Braddock:  Diana received the opening proof-sheets of her little volume, and an instalment of the modest honorarium:  and finally, the Plaintiff in the suit involving her name was adjudged to have not proved his charge.