d strewn by the way. She knew
these woods; he was walking in her footprints; she was engaged to be
married. Yes, his principle, never to ask a woman to marry him, never to
court her, without bank-book assurance of his ability to support her in
cordial comfort, was right. He maintained it, and owned himself a donkey
for having stuck to it. Between him and his excellent principle there was
war, without the slightest division. Warned of the danger of losing her,
he would have done the same again, confessing himself donkey for his
pains. The principle was right, because it was due to the woman. His
rigid adherence to the principle set him belabouring his donkey-ribs, as
the proper due to himself. For he might have had a chance, all through
two Winters. The opportunities had been numberless. Here, in this beech
wood; near that thornbush; on the juniper slope; from the corner of chalk
and sand in junction, to the corner of clay and chalk; all the length of
the wooded ridge he had reminders of her presence and his priceless
chances: and still the standard of his conduct said No, while his heart
bled.

He felt that a chance had been. More sagacious than Lady Dunstane, from
his not nursing a wound, he divined in the abruptness of Diana's
resolution to accept a suitor, a sober reason, and a fitting one, for the
wish that she might be settled. And had he spoken!--If he had spoken to
her, she might have given her hand to him, to a dishonourable brute! A
blissful brute. But a worse than donkey. Yes, his principle was right,
and he lashed with it, and prodded with it, drove himself out into the
sour wilds where bachelordom crops noxious weeds without a hallowing
luminary, and clung to it, bruised and bleeding though he was.

The gentleness of Lady Dunstane soothed him during the term of a visit
that was rather like purgatory sweetened by angelical tears. He was glad
to go, wretched in having gone. She diverted the incessant conflict
between his insubordinate self and his castigating, but avowedly
sovereign, principle. Away from her, he was the victim of a flagellation
so dire that it almost drove him to revolt against the lord he served,
and somehow the many memories at Copsley kept him away. Sir Lukin, when
speaking of Diana's 'engagement to that fellow Warwick,' exalted her with
an extraordinary enthusiasm, exceedingly hard for the silly beast who had
lost her to bear. For the present the place dearest to Redworth of all
places on