Tony,' said he.

The time was again stated, the pledge repeated. He forbore entreaties for
privileges, and won her gratitude.

They named once more the place of meeting and the hour: more significant
to them than phrases of intensest love and passion. Pressing hands
sharply for pledge of good faith, they sundered.

She still had him in her eyes when he had gone. Her old world lay
shattered; her new world was up without a dawn, with but one figure, the
sun of it, to light the swinging strangeness.

Was ever man more marvellously transformed? or woman more wildly swept
from earth into the clouds? So she mused in the hum of her tempest of
heart and brain, forgetful of the years and the conditions preparing both
of them for this explosion.

She had much to do: the arrangements to dismiss her servants, write to
house-agents and her lawyer, and write fully to Emma, write the enigmatic
farewell to the Esquarts and Lady Pennon, Mary Paynham, Arthur Rhodes,
Whitmonby (stanch in friendship, but requiring friendly touches), Henry
Wilmers, and Redworth. He was reserved to the last, for very enigmatical
adieux: he would hear the whole story from Emma; must be left to think as
he liked.

The vague letters were excellently well composed: she was going abroad,
and knew not when she would return; bade her friends think the best they
could of her in the meantime. Whitmonby was favoured with an anecdote, to
be read as an apologue by the light of subsequent events. But the letter
to Emma tasked Diana. Intending to write fully, her pen committed the
briefest sentences: the tenderness she felt for Emma wakening her heart
to sing that she was loved, loved, and knew love at last; and Emma's
foreseen antagonism to the love and the step it involved rendered her
pleadings in exculpation a stammered confession of guiltiness,
ignominious, unworthy of the pride she felt in her lover. 'I am like a
cartridge rammed into a gun, to be discharged at a certain hour
tomorrow,' she wrote; and she sealed a letter so frigid that she could
not decide to post it. All day she imagined hearing a distant cannonade.
The light of the day following was not like earthly light. Danvers
assured her there was no fog in London.

'London is insupportable; I am going to Paris, and shall send for you in
a week or two,' said Diana.

'Allow me to say, ma'am, that you had better take me with you,' said
Danvers.

'Are you afraid of travelling by yourself, you foolish