His luggage had to be removed.  He dropped his porter a lordly fee and drove home.  From that astonished solitude he strolled to his Club.  Curiosity mastering the wrath it was mixed with, he left his Club and crossed the park southward in the direction of Diana’s house, abusing her for her inveterate attachment to the regions of Westminster.  There she used to receive Lord Dannisburgh; innocently, no doubt-assuredly quite innocently; and her husband had quitted the district.  Still it was rather childish for a woman to-be always haunting the seats of Parliament.  Her disposition to imagine that she was able to inspire statesmen came in for a share of ridicule; for when we know ourselves to be ridiculous, a retort in kind, unjust upon consideration, is balm.  The woman dragged him down to the level of common men; that was the peculiar injury, and it swept her undistinguished into the stream of women.  In appearance, as he had proved to the fellows at his Club, he was perfectly self-possessed, mentally distracted and bitter, hating himself for it, snapping at the cause of it.  She had not merely disappointed, she had slashed his high conceit of himself, curbed him at the first animal dash forward, and he champed the bit with the fury of a thwarted racer.

Twice he passed her house.  Of course no light was shown at her windows.  They were scanned malignly.

He held it due to her to call and inquire whether there was any truth in the report of Mrs. Warwick’s illness.  Mrs. Warwick!  She meant to keep the name.

A maid-servant came to the door with a candle in her hand revealing red eyelids.  She was not aware that her mistress was unwell.  Her mistress had left home some time after six o’clock with a gentleman.  She was unable to tell him the gentleman’s name.  William, the footman, had opened the door to him.  Her mistress’s maid Mrs. Danvers had gone to the Play—­with William.  She thought that Mrs. Danvers might know who the gentleman was.  The girl’s eyelids blinked, and she turned aside.  Dacier consoled her with a piece of gold, saying he would come and see Mrs. Danvers in the morning.

His wrath was partially quieted by the new speculations offered up to it.  He could not conjure a suspicion of treachery in Diana Warwick; and a treachery so foully cynical!  She had gone with a gentleman.  He guessed on all sides; he struck at walls, as in complete obscurity.

The mystery of her conduct troubling his wits for the many hours was explained by Danvers.  With a sympathy that she was at pains to show, she informed him that her mistress was not at all unwell, and related of how Mr. Redworth had arrived just when her mistress was on the point of starting for Paris and the Continent; because poor Lady Dunstane was this very day to undergo an operation under the surgeons at Copsley, and she did not wish her mistress to be present, but Mr. Redworth thought her mistress ought to be there, and he had gone down thinking she was there, and then came back in hot haste to fetch her, and was just in time, as it happened, by two or three minutes.