er to
The Crossways, where she remained nursing for several months, reading
diligently, as her letters showed, and watching the approaches of the
destroyer. She wrote like her former self, subdued by meditation in the
presence of that inevitable. The world ceased barking. Lady Dunstane
could suppose Mr. Warwick to have now a reconciling experience of his
wife's noble qualities. He probably did value them more. He spoke of her
to Sir Lukin in London with commendation. 'She is an attentive nurse.' He
inherited a considerable increase of income when he and his wife were the
sole tenants of The Crossways, but disliking the house, for reasons hard
to explain by a man previously professing to share her attachment to it,
he wished to sell or let the place, and his wife would do neither. She
proposed to continue living in their small London house rather than be
cut off from The Crossways, which, he said, was ludicrous: people should
live up to their position; and he sneered at the place, and slightly
wounded her, for she was open to a wound when the cold fire of a renewed
attempt at warmth between them was crackling and showing bits of flame,
after she had given proof of her power to serve. Service to himself and
his relatives affected him. He deferred to her craze for The Crossways,
and they lived in a larger London house, 'up to their position,' which
means ever a trifle beyond it, and gave choice dinner-parties to the most
eminent. His jealousy slumbered. Having ideas of a seat in Parliament at
this period, and preferment superior to the post he held, Mr. Warwick
deemed it sagacious to court the potent patron Lord Dannisburgh could be;
and his wife had his interests at heart, the fork-tongued world said. The
cry revived. Stories of Lord D. and Mrs. W. whipped the hot pursuit. The
moral repute of the great Whig lord and the beauty of the lady composed
inflammable material.

'Are you altogether cautious?' Lady Dunstane wrote to Diana; and her
friend sent a copious reply: 'You have the fullest right to ask your Tony
anything, and I will answer as at the Judgement bar. You allude to Lord
Dannisburgh. He is near what Dada's age would have been, and is, I think
I can affirm, next to my dead father and my Emmy, my dearest friend. I
love him. I could say it in the streets without shame; and you do not
imagine me shameless. Whatever his character in his younger days, he can
be honestly a woman's friend, believe me. I see straight to h