Emma was requested to make Mr. Redworth acquainted with her story, all of it:—­’So that this exalted friendship of his may be shaken to a common level.  He has an unbearably high estimate of me, and it hurts me.  Tell him all; and more than even you have known:—­but for his coming to me, on the eve of your passing under the surgeon’s hands, I should have gone—­flung the world my glove!  A matter of minutes.  Ten minutes later!  The train was to start for France at eight, and I was awaited.  I have to thank heaven that the man was one of those who can strike icily.  Tell Mr. Redworth what I say.  You two converse upon every subject.  One may be too loftily respected—­in my case.  By and by—­for he is a tolerant reader of life and women, I think—­we shall be humdrum friends of the lasting order.’

Emma’s cheeks were as red as Diana’s.  ’I fancy Tom Redworth has not much to learn concerning any person he cares for,’ she said.  ’You like him?  I have lost touch of you, my dear, and ask.’

’I like him:  that I can say.  He is everything I am not.  But now I am free, the sense of being undeservedly over-esteemed imposes fetters, and I don’t like them.  I have been called a Beauty.  Rightly or other, I have had a Beauty’s career; and a curious caged beast’s life I have found it.  Will you promise me to speak to him?  And also, thank him for helping Arthur Rhodes to a situation.’

At this, the tears fell from her.  And so enigmatical had she grown to Emma, that her bosom friend took them for a confessed attachment to the youth.

Diana’s wretched emotion shamed her from putting any inquiries whether Redworth had been told.  He came repeatedly, and showed no change of face, always continuing in the form of huge hovering griffin; until an idea, instead of the monster bird, struck her.  Might she not, after all, be cowering under imagination?  The very maidenly idea wakened her womanliness—­to reproach her remainder of pride, not to see more accurately.  It was the reason why she resolved, against Emma’s extreme entreaties, to take lodgings in the South valley below the heights, where she could be independent of fancies and perpetual visitors, but near her beloved at any summons of urgency; which Emma would not habitually send because of the coming of a particular gentleman.  Dresses were left at Copsley for dining and sleeping there upon occasion, and poor Danvers, despairing over the riddle of her mistress, was condemned to the melancholy descent.

‘It’s my belief,’ she confided to Lady Dunstane’s maid Bartlett, ’she’ll hate men all her life after that Mr. Dacier.’

If women were deceived, and the riddle deceived herself, there is excuse for a plain man like Redworth in not having the slightest clue to the daily shifting feminine maze he beheld.  The strange thing was, that during her maiden time she had never been shifty or flighty, invariably limpid and direct.

CHAPTER XLI