images, keys of dreamed horizons, that opened a world to her at any chance breath altering shape or hue:  a different world from the one of her old ambition.  Her fall had brought her renovatingly to earth, and the saving naturalness of the woman recreated her childlike, with shrouded recollections of her strange taste of life behind her; with a tempered fresh blood to enjoy aimlessly, and what would erewhile have been a barrenness to her sensibilities.

In time the craving was evolved for positive knowledge, and shells and stones and weeds were deposited on the library-table at Copsley, botanical and geological books comparingly examined, Emma Dunstane always eager to assist; for the samples wafted her into the heart of the woods.  Poor Sir Lukin tried three days of their society, and was driven away headlong to Club-life.  He sent down Redworth, with whom the walks of the zealous inquirers were profitable, though Diana, in acknowledging it to herself, reserved a decided preference for her foregone ethereal mood, larger, and untroubled by the presence of a man.  The suspicion Emma had sown was not excited to an alarming activity; but she began to question:  could the best of men be simply—­a woman’s friend?—­was not long service rather less than a proof of friendship?  She could be blind when her heart was on fire for another.  Her passion for her liberty, however, received no ominous warning to look to the defences.  He was the same blunt speaker, and knotted his brows as queerly as ever at Arthur, in a transparent calculation of how this fellow meant to gain his livelihood.  She wilfully put it to the credit of Arthur’s tact that his elder was amiable, without denying her debt to the good man for leaving her illness and her appearance unmentioned.  He forbore even to scan her features.  Diana’s wan contemplativeness, in which the sparkle of meaning slowly rose to flash, as we see a bubble rising from the deeps of crystal waters, caught at his heart while he talked his matter-of-fact.  But her instinct of a present safety was true.  She and Arthur discovered—­and it set her first meditating whether she did know the man so very accurately—­that he had printed, for private circulation, when at Harrow School, a little book, a record of his observations in nature.  Lady Dunstane was the casual betrayer.  He shrugged at the nonsense of a boy’s publishing; anybody’s publishing he held for a doubtful proof of sanity.  His excuse was, that he had not published opinions.  Let us observe, and assist in our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights!

‘We retire,’ Diana said, for herself and Arthur.

‘The wise thing, is to avoid the position that enforces publishing,’ said he, to the discomposure of his raw junior.