nd he composed his face. No hope in speaking had
nerved him; merely the passion to speak. Diana understood the state, and
pitied the naturally modest young fellow, and chafed at herself as a
senseless incendiary, who did mischief right and left, from seeking to
shun the apparently inevitable. A sidethought intruded, that he would
have done his wooing poetically--not in the burly storm, or bull-Saxon,
she apprehended. Supposing it imperative with her to choose? She looked
up, and the bird of broader wing darkened the whole sky, bidding her know
that she had no choice.

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
womanli