It suited her, frail as her health was, and her wisdom striving to the spiritual of happiness.  War with herself was far from happiness in the bosom of Diana.  She wanted external life, action, fields for energies, to vary the struggle.  It fretted and rendered her ill at ease.  In her solitary rides with Sir Lukin through a long winter season, she appalled that excellent but conventionally-minded gentleman by starting, nay supporting, theories next to profane in the consideration of a land-owner.  She spoke of Reform:  of the Repeal of the Corn Laws as the simple beginning of the grants due to the people.  She had her ideas, of course, from that fellow Redworth, an occasional visitor at Copsley; and a man might be a donkey and think what he pleased, since he had a vocabulary to back his opinions.  A woman, Sir Lukin held, was by nature a mute in politics.  Of the thing called a Radical woman, he could not believe that she was less than monstrous:  ‘with a nose,’ he said; and doubtless, horse teeth, hatchet jaws, slatternly in the gown, slipshod, awful.  As for a girl, an unmarried, handsome girl, admittedly beautiful, her interjections, echoing a man, were ridiculous, and not a little annoying now and them, for she could be piercingly sarcastic.  Her vocabulary in irony was a quiverful.  He admired her and liked her immensely; complaining only of her turn for unfeminine topics.  He pardoned her on the score of the petty difference rankling between them in reference to his abandonment of his Profession, for here she was patriotically wrong-headed.  Everybody knew that he had sold out in order to look after his estates of Copsley and Dunena, secondly:  and in the first place, to nurse and be a companion to his wife.  He had left her but four times in five months; he had spent just three weeks of that time away from her in London.  No one could doubt of his having kept his pledge, although his wife occupied herself with books and notions and subjects foreign to his taste—­his understanding, too, he owned.  And Redworth had approved of his retirement, had a contempt for soldiering.  ‘Quite as great as yours for civilians, I can tell you,’ Sir Lukin said, dashing out of politics to the vexatious personal subject.  Her unexpressed disdain was ruffling.

‘Mr. Redworth recommends work:  he respects the working soldier,’ said Diana.

Sir Lukin exclaimed that he had been a working soldier; he was ready to serve if his country wanted him.  He directed her to anathematize Peace, instead of scorning a fellow for doing the duties next about him:  and the mention of Peace fetched him at a bound back to politics.  He quoted a distinguished Tory orator, to the effect, that any lengthened term of peace bred maggots in the heads of the people.

’Mr. Redworth spoke of it:  he translated something from Aristophanes for a retort,’ said Diana.

‘Well, we’re friends, eh?’ Sir Lukin put forth a hand.

She looked at him surprised at the unnecessary call for a show, of friendship; she touched his hand with two tips of her fingers, remarking, ‘I should think so, indeed.’