s to be sure of a sympathetic companion for a walk on the
Downs.' At The Crossways, they were soon aware that Mr. Redworth's
domestics were in attendance to serve them. Manifestly the house was his
property, and not much of an investment! The principal bed-room, her
father's once, and her own, devoted now to Emma's use, appalled her with
a resemblance to her London room. She had noticed some of her furniture
at 'Dividend Manor,' and chosen to consider it in the light of a bargain
from a purchase at the sale of her goods. Here was her bed, her
writing-table, her chair of authorship, desks, books, ornaments,
water-colour sketches. And the drawing-room was fitted with her brackets
and etageres, holding every knickknack she had possessed and scattered,
small bronzes, antiques, ivory junks, quaint ivory figures Chinese and
Japanese, bits of porcelain, silver incense-urns, dozens of dainty
sundries. She had a shamed curiosity to spy for an omission of one of
them; all were there. The Crossways had been turned into a trap.

Her reply to this blunt wooing, conspired, she felt justifled in
thinking, between him and Emma, was emphatic in muteness. She treated it
as if unobserved. At night, in bed, the scene of his mission from Emma to
her under this roof, barred her customary ascent to her planetary
kingdom. Next day she took Arthur after breakfast for a walk on the Downs
and remained absent till ten minutes before the hour of dinner. As to
that young gentleman, he was near to being caressed in public. Arthur's
opinions, his good sayings, were quoted; his excellent companionship on
really poetical walks, and perfect sympathy, praised to his face.
Challenged by her initiative to a kind of language that threw Redworth
out, he declaimed: 'We pace with some who make young morning stale.'

'Oh! stale as peel of fruit long since consumed,' she chimed.

And go they proceeded; and they laughed, Emma smiled a little, Redworth
did the same beneath one of his questioning frowns--a sort of fatherly
grimace.

A suspicion that this man, when infatuated, was able to practise the
absurdest benevolence, the burlesque of chivalry, as a man-admiring sex
esteems it, stirred very naughty depths of the woman in Diana, labouring
under her perverted mood. She put him to proof, for the chance of arming
her wickedest to despise him. Arthur was petted, consulted, cited,
flattered all round; all but caressed. She played, with a reserve, the
maturish youn