‘Mary Paynham?’

The desperate half-laugh greeting the name convinced more than a dozen denials.

Sir Lukin kept edging round for a full view of the friend who shunned inspection.  ’But is it? . . . can it be? it must be, after all! . . . why, of course it is!  But the thing staring us in the face is just what we never see.  Just the husband for her!—­and she’s the wife!  Why, Diana Warwick ’s the very woman, of course!  I remember I used to think so before she was free to wed.’

‘She is not of that opinion.’  Redworth blew a heavy breath; and it should be chronicled as a sigh; but it was hugely masculine.

’Because you didn’t attack, the moment she was free; that ’s what upset my calculations,’ the sagacious gentleman continued, for a vindication of his acuteness:  then seizing the reply:  ’Refuses? you don’t mean to say you’re the man to take a refusal? and from a green widow in the blush?  Did you see her cheeks when she was peeping at the letter in her hand?  She colours at half a word—­takes the lift of a finger for Hymen coming.  And lots of fellows are after her; I know it from Emmy.  But you’re not the man to be refused.  You’re her friend—­her champion.  That woman Fryar-Gunnett would have it you were the favoured lover, and sneered at my talk of old friendship.  Women are always down dead on the facts; can’t put them off a scent!’

‘There’s the mischief!’ Redworth blew again.  ’I had no right to be championing Mrs. Warwick’s name.  Or the world won’t give it, at all events.  I’m a blundering donkey.  Yes, she wishes to keep her liberty.  And, upon my soul, I’m in love with everything she wishes!  I’ve got the habit.’

‘Habit be hanged!’ cried Sir Lukin.  ’You’re in love with the woman.  I know a little more of you now, Mr. Tom.  You’re a fellow in earnest about what you do.  You’re feeling it now, on the rack, by heaven! though you keep a bold face.  Did she speak positively?—­sort of feminine of “you’re the monster, not the man”? or measured little doctor’s dose of pity?—­worse sign.’  You ‘re not going?’

‘If you’ll drive me down in half an hour,’ said Redworth.

‘Give me an hour,’ Sir Lukin replied, and went straight to his wife’s blue-room.

Diana was roused from a meditation on a letter she held, by the entrance of Emma in her bed-chamber, to whom she said:  ’I have here the very craziest bit of writing!—­but what is disturbing you, dear?’

Emma sat beside her, panting and composing her lips to speak.  ’Do you, love me?  I throw policy to the winds, if only, I can batter at you for your heart and find it!  Tony, do you love me?  But don’t answer:  give me your hand.  You have rejected him!’

‘He has told you?’

’No.  He is not the man to cry out for a wound.  He heard in London—­Lukin has had the courage to tell me, after his fashion:—­Tom Redworth heard an old story, coming from one of the baser kind of women:  grossly false, he knew.  I mention only Lord Wroxeter and Lockton.  He went to man and woman both, and had it refuted, and stopped their tongues, on peril; as he of all men is able to do when he wills it.’