sylphidine, unseizable; and between perplexing and mollifying the slaves of facts, she saw them at their heels, a tearful fry, abjectly imitative of her melodramatic performances.  The spectacle was presented of a band of legal gentlemen vociferating mightily for swords and the onset, like the Austrian empress’s Magyars, to vindicate her just and holy cause.  Our Law-courts failing, they threatened Parliament, and for a last resort, the country!  We are not going to be the woman Warwick without a stir, my brethren.

Emma, an early riser that morning, for the purpose of a private consultation with Mr. Redworth, found her lying placidly wakeful, to judge by appearances.

‘You have not slept, my dear child?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Diana, giving her hand and offering the lips.  ’I’m only having a warm morning bath in bed,’ she added, in explanation of a chill moisture that the touch of her exposed skin betrayed; for whatever the fun of the woman Warwick, there had been sympathetic feminine horrors in the frame of the sentient woman.

Emma fancied she kissed a quiet sufferer.  A few remarks very soon set her wildly laughing.  Both were laughing when Danvers entered the room, rather guilty, being late; and the sight of the prim-visaged maid she had been driving among the lawyers kindled Diana’s comic imagination to such a pitch that she ran riot in drolleries, carrying her friend headlong on the tide.

‘I have not laughed so much since you were married,’ said Emma.

‘Nor I, dear; proving that the bar to it was the ceremony,’ said Diana.

She promised to remain at Copsley three days.  ’Then for the campaign in Mr. Redworth’s metropolis.  I wonder whether I may ask him to get me lodgings:  a sitting-room and two bedrooms.  The Crossways has a board up for letting.  I should prefer to be my own tenant; only it would give me a hundred pounds more to get a substitute’s money.  I should like to be at work writing instantly.  Ink is my opium, and the pen my nigger, and he must dig up gold for me.  It is written.  Danvers, you can make ready to dress me when I ring.’

Emma helped the beautiful woman to her dressing-gown and the step from her bed.  She had her thoughts, and went down to Redworth at the breakfast-table, marvelling that any husband other than a madman could cast such a jewel away.  The material loveliness eclipses intellectual qualities in such reflections.

‘He must be mad,’ she said, compelled to disburden herself in a congenial atmosphere; which, however, she infrigidated by her overflow of exclamatory wonderment—­a curtain that shook voluminous folds, luring Redworth to dreams of the treasure forfeited.  He became rigidly practical.

’Provision will have to be made for her.  Lukin must see Mr. Warwick.  She will do wisely to stay with friends in town, mix in company.  Women are the best allies for such cases.  Who are her solicitors?’