dition to bear it well. You will pardon me, Mrs.
Warwick . . .'

'Fully! Fully!'

'I venture to offer merely practical advice. You have thought of it all,
but have not felt it. In these cases, the one thing to do is to make a
stand. Lady Dunstane has a clear head. She sees what has to be endured by
you. Consider: she appeals to me to bring you her letter. Would she have
chosen me, or any man, for her messenger, if it had not appeared to her a
matter of life and death? You count me among your friends.'

'One of the truest.'

'Here are two, then, and your own good sense. For I do not believe it to
be a question of courage.'

'He has commenced. Let him carry it out,' said Diana.

Her desperation could have added the cry--And give me freedom! That was
the secret in her heart. She had struck on the hope for the detested yoke
to be broken at any cost.

'I decline to meet his charges. I despise them. If my friends have faith
in me--and they may!--I want nothing more.'

'Well, I won't talk commonplaces about the world,' said Redworth. 'We can
none of us afford to have it against us. Consider a moment: to your
friends you are the Diana Merion they knew, and they will not suffer an
injury to your good name without a struggle. But if you fly? You leave
the dearest you have to the whole brunt of it.

'They will, if they love me.'

'They will. But think of the shock to her. Lady Dunstane reads you--'

'Not quite. No, not if she even wishes me to stay!' said Diana.

He was too intent on his pleading to perceive a signification.

'She reads you as clearly in the dark as if you were present with her.'

'Oh! why am I not ten years older!' Diana cried, and tried to face round
to him, and stopped paralyzed. 'Ten years older, I could discuss my
situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend
myself.'

'And then you would not dream of flight before it!'

'No, she does not read me: no! She saw that I might come to The
Crossways. She--no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof,
in contempt of this baseness.'

'And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest.
Her strength will not support it.'

'Emma! Oh, cruel!' Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs. She dropped
on another chair. 'Go I must, I cannot turn back. She saw my old
attachment to this place. It was not difficult to guess . . . Who but I
can see the wisest course for me!'

'It comes to this, that the