.'

He was condemned by an afflicted delicacy, the sharpest of critical
tribunals.

Emma bade her not to be too sweeping from a bad example.

'It is not a single one,' said Diana. 'What vexes me and frets me is,
that I must be a prisoner, or allow Danvers to mount guard. And I can't
see the end of it. And Danvers is no magician. She seems to know her
countrymen, though. She warded one of them off, by saying to me: "This is
the crossing, my lady." He fled.'

Lady Dunstane affixed the popular title to the latter kind of gentleman.
She was irritated on her friend's behalf, and against the worrying of her
sisterhood, thinking in her heart, nevertheless, that the passing of a
face and figure like Diana's might inspire honourable emotions, pitiable
for being hapless.

'If you were with me, dear, you would have none of these annoyances,' she
said, pleading forlornly.

Diana smiled to herself. 'No! I should relapse into softness. This life
exactly suits my present temper. My landlady is respectful and attentive;
the little housemaid is a willing slave; Danvers does not despise them
pugnaciously; they make a home for me, and I am learning daily. Do you
know, the less ignorant I become, the more considerate I am for the
ignorance of others--I love them for it.' She squeezed Emma's hand with
more meaning than her friend apprehended. 'So I win my advantage from the
trifles I have to endure. They are really trifles, and I should once have
thought them mountains!'

For the moment Diana stipulated that she might not have to encounter
friends or others at Lady Dunstane's dinner-table, and the season not
being favourable to those gatherings planned by Lady Dunstane in her
project of winning supporters, there was a respite, during which Sir
Lukin worked manfully at his three Clubs to vindicate Diana's name from
the hummers and hawers, gaining half a dozen hot adherents, and a body of
lukewarm, sufficiently stirred to be desirous to see the lady. He worked
with true champion zeal, although an interview granted him by the husband
settled his opinion as to any possibility of the two ever coming to
terms. Also it struck him that if he by misadventure had been a woman and
the wife of such a fellow, by Jove! . . .his apostrophe to the father of
the gods of pagandom signifying the amount of matter Warwick would have
had reason to complain of in earnest. By ricochet his military mind
rebounded from his knowledge of himself to an ardent,