earth was unendurable.

Meanwhile the value of railway investments rose in the market, fast as
asparagus-heads for cutting: a circumstance that added stings to
reflection. Had he been only a little bolder, a little less the fanatical
devotee of his rule of masculine honour, less the slave to the letter of
success . . . . But why reflect at all? Here was a goodly income
approaching, perhaps a seat in Parliament; a station for the airing of
his opinions--and a social status for the wife now denied to him. The
wife was denied to him; he could conceive of no other. The tyrant-ridden,
reticent, tenacious creature had thoroughly wedded her in mind; her view
of things had a throne beside his own, even in their differences. He
perceived, agreeing or disagreeing, the motions of her brain, as he did
with none other of women; and this it is which stamps character on her,
divides her from them, upraises and enspheres. He declined to live with
any other of the sex.

Before he could hear of the sort of man Mr. Warwick was--a perpetual
object of his quest--the bridal bells had rung, and Diana Antonia Merion
lost her maiden name. She became the Mrs. Warwick of our footballing
world.

Why she married, she never told. Possibly, in amazement at herself
subsequently, she forgot the specific reason. That which weighs heavily
in youth, and commits us to desperate action, will be a trifle under
older eyes, to blunter senses, a more enlightened understanding. Her
friend Emma probed for the reason vainly. It was partly revealed to
Redworth, by guess-work and a putting together of pieces, yet quite
luminously, as it were by touch of tentacle-feelers--one evening that he
passed with Sir Lukin Dunstane, when the lachrymose ex-dragoon and son of
Idlesse, had rather more than dined.

CHAPTER VI

THE COUPLE

Six months a married woman, Diana came to Copsley to introduce her
husband. They had run over Italy: 'the Italian Peninsula,' she quoted him
in a letter to Lady Dunstane: and were furnishing their London house. Her
first letters from Italy appeared to have a little bloom of sentiment.
Augustus was mentioned as liking this and that in the land of beauty. He
patronized Art, and it was a pleasure to hear him speak upon pictures and
sculptures; he knew a great deal about them. 'He is an authority.' Her
humour soon began to play round the fortunate man, who did not seem, to
the reader's mind, to bear so well a sentimental clothing. His p