gers
eagerly tore it open, her heart, the champion rider over-night, sank. It
needed support of facts, and feared them: not in distrust of that dear
persecuted soul, but because the very bravest of hearts is of its nature
a shivering defender, sensitive in the presence of any hostile array,
much craving for material support, until the mind and spirit displace it,
depute it to second them instead of leading.

She read by a dull November fog-light a mixture of the dreadful and the
comforting, and dwelt upon the latter in abandonment, hugged it, though
conscious of evil and the little that there was to veritably console.

The close of the letter struck the blow. After bluntly stating that Mr.
Warwick had served her with a process, and that he had no case without
suborning witnesses, Diana said: 'But I leave the case, and him, to the
world. Ireland, or else America, it is a guiltless kind of suicide to
bury myself abroad. He has my letters. They are such as I can own to you;
and ask you to kiss me--and kiss me when you have heard all the evidence,
all that I can add to it, kiss me. You know me too well to think I would
ask you to kiss criminal lips. But I cannot face the world. In the dock,
yes. Not where I am expected to smile and sparkle, on pain of incurring
suspicion if I show a sign of oppression. I cannot do that. I see myself
wearing a false grin--your Tony! No, I do well to go. This is my
resolution; and in consequence,--my beloved! my only truly loved on
earth! I do not come to you, to grieve you, as I surely should. Nor would
it soothe me, dearest. This will be to you the best of reasons. It could
not soothe me to see myself giving pain to Emma. I am like a pestilence,
and let me swing away to the desert, for there I do no harm. I know I am
right. I have questioned myself--it is not cowardice. I do not quail. I
abhor the part of actress. I should do it well--too well; destroy my soul
in the performance. Is a good name before such a world as this worth that
sacrifice? A convent and self-quenching;--cloisters would seem to me like
holy dew. But that would be sleep, and I feel the powers of life. Never
have I felt them so mightily. If it were not for being called on to act
and mew, I would stay, fight, meet a bayonet-hedge of charges and rebut
them. I have my natural weapons and my cause. It must be confessed that I
have also more knowledge of men and the secret contempt--it must be--the
best of them entertain for us