When she had finished the composition she perused it, and did not recognize herself in her language, though she had been so guarded to cover the wound her Tony dealt their friendship—­in some degree injuring their sex.  For it might now, after such an example, verily seem that women are incapable of a translucent perfect confidence:  their impulses, caprices, desperations, tricks of concealment, trip a heart-whole friendship.  Well, to-morrow, if not to-day, the tripping may be expected!  Lady Dunstane resigned herself sadly to a lowered view of her Tony’s character.  This was her unconscious act of reprisal.  Her brilliant beloved Tony, dazzling but in beauty and the gifted mind, stood as one essentially with the common order of women.  She wished to be settled, Mr. Warwick proposed, and for the sake of living at The Crossways she accepted him—­she, the lofty scorner of loveless marriages! who had said—­how many times! that nothing save love excused it!  She degraded their mutual high standard of womankind.  Diana was in eclipse, full three parts.  The bulk of the gentlemanly official she had chosen obscured her.  But I have written very carefully, thought Lady Dunstane, dropping her answer into the post-bag.  She had, indeed, been so care ful, that to cloak her feelings, she had written as another person.  Women with otiose husbands have a task to preserve friendship.

Redworth carried his burden through the frosty air at a pace to melt icicles in Greenland.  He walked unthinkingly, right ahead, to the red West, as he discovered when pausing to consult his watch.  Time was left to return at the same pace and dress for dinner; he swung round and picked up remembrances of sensations he had strewn by the way.  She knew these woods; he was walking in her footprints; she was engaged to be married.  Yes, his principle, never to ask a woman to marry him, never to court her, without bank-book assurance of his ability to support her in cordial comfort, was right.  He maintained it, and owned himself a donkey for having stuck to it.  Between him and his excellent principle there was war, without the slightest division.  Warned of the danger of losing her, he would have done the same again, confessing himself donkey for his pains.  The principle was right, because it was due to the woman.  His rigid adherence to the principle set him belabouring his donkey-ribs, as the proper due to himself.  For he might have had a chance, all through two Winters.  The opportunities had been numberless.  Here, in this beech wood; near that thornbush; on the juniper slope; from the corner of chalk and sand in junction, to the corner of clay and chalk; all the length of the wooded ridge he had reminders of her presence and his priceless chances:  and still the standard of his conduct said No, while his heart bled.