She was not the woman to take poor vengeance.  But, Oh! she was profoundly humiliated, shamed through and through.  The question, was I guilty of any lightness—­anything to bring this on me? would not be laid.  And how she pitied her friend!  This house, her heart’s home, was now a wreck to her:  nay, worse, a hostile citadel.  The burden of the task of meeting Emma with an open face, crushed her like very guilt.  Yet she succeeded.  After an hour in her bedchamber she managed to lock up her heart and summon the sprite of acting to her tongue and features:  which ready attendant on the suffering female host performed his liveliest throughout the evening, to Emma’s amusement, and to the culprit ex-dragoon’s astonishment; in whom, to tell the truth of him, her sparkle and fun kindled the sense of his being less criminal than he had supposed, with a dim vision of himself as the real proven donkey for not having been a harmless dash more so.  But, to be just as well as penetrating, this was only the effect of her personal charm on his nature.  So it spurred him a moment, when it struck this doleful man that to have secured one kiss of those fresh and witty sparkling lips he would endure forfeits, pangs, anything save the hanging of his culprit’s head before his Emma.  Reflection washed him clean.  Secresy is not a medical restorative, by no means a good thing for the baffled amorously-adventurous cavalier, unless the lady’s character shall have been firmly established in or over his hazy wagging noddle.  Reflection informed him that the honourable, generous, proud girl spared him for the sake of the house she loved.  After a night of tossing, he rose right heartily repentant.  He showed it in the best manner, not dramatically.  On her accepting his offer to drive her down to the valley to meet the coach, a genuine illumination of pure gratitude made a better man of him, both to look at and in feeling.  She did not hesitate to consent; and he had half expected a refusal.  She talked on the way quite as usual, cheerfully, if not altogether so spiritedly.  A flash of her matchless wit now and then reduced him to that abject state of man beside the fair person he has treated high cavalierly, which one craves permission to describe as pulp.  He was utterly beaten.

The sight of Redworth on the valley road was a relief to them both.  He had slept in one of the houses of the valley, and spoke of having had the intention to mount to Copsley.  Sir Lukin proposed to drive him back.  He glanced at Diana, still with that calculating abstract air of his; and he was rallied.  He confessed to being absorbed in railways, the new lines of railways projected to thread the land and fast mapping it.

’You ‘ve not embarked money in them?’ said Sir Lukin.

The answer was:  ‘I have; all I possess.’  And Redworth for a sharp instant set his eyes on Diana, indifferent to Sir Lukin’s bellow of stupefaction at such gambling on the part of a prudent fellow.