I must not be unjust!  Lady Dunstane hastened to exclaim, at a whisper that he had at least proved his appreciation of Tony; whom he preferred to call Diana, as she gladly remembered:  and the two were bound together for a moment warmly by her recollection of her beloved Tony’s touching little petition:  ‘You will invite us again?’ and then there had flashed in Tony’s dear dark eyes the look of their old love drowning.  They were not to be thought of separately.  She admitted that the introduction to a woman of her friend’s husband is crucially trying to him:  he may well show worse than he is.  Yet his appreciation of Tony in espousing her, was rather marred by Sir Lukin’s report of him as a desperate admirer of beautiful woman.  It might be for her beauty only, not for her spiritual qualities!  At present he did not seem aware of their existence.  But, to be entirely just, she had hardly exhibited them or a sign of them during the first interview:  and sitting with his hostess alone, he had seized the occasion to say, that he was the happiest of men.  He said it with the nearest approach to fervour she had noticed.  Perhaps the very fact of his not producing a highly favourable impression, should be set to plead on his behalf.  Such as he was, he was himself, no simulator.  She longed for Mr. Redworth’s report of him.

Her compassion for Redworth’s feelings when beholding the woman he loved another man’s wife, did not soften the urgency of her injunction that he should go speedily, and see as much of them as he could.  ‘Because,’ she gave her reason, ’I wish Diana to know she has not lost a single friend through her marriage, and is only one the richer.’

Redworth buckled himself to the task.  He belonged to the class of his countrymen who have a dungeon-vault for feelings that should not be suffered to cry abroad, and into this oubliette he cast them, letting them feed as they might, or perish.  It was his heart down below, and in no voluntary musings did he listen to it, to sustain the thing.  Grimly lord of himself, he stood emotionless before the world.  Some worthy fellows resemble him, and they are called deep-hearted.  He was dungeon-deep.  The prisoner underneath might clamour and leap; none heard him or knew of him; nor did he ever view the day.  Diana’s frank:  ’Ah, Mr. Redworth, how glad I am to see you!’ was met by the calmest formalism of the wish for her happiness.  He became a guest at her London house, and his report of the domesticity there, and notably of the lord of the house, pleased Lady Dunstane more than her husband’s.  He saw the kind of man accurately, as far as men are to be seen on the surface; and she could say assentingly, without anxiety:  ‘Yes, yes,’ to his remarks upon Mr. Warwick, indicative of a man of capable head in worldly affairs, commonplace beside his wife.  The noble gentleman for Diana was yet unborn, they tacitly agreed.  Meantime one must not put a mortal husband to the fiery ordeal of his wife’s deserts,