e drawing-room, where Sir Lukin took
up from the table one of his wife's Latin books, a Persius, bearing her
marginal notes. He dropped his head on it, with sobs.

The voice of Diana recalled him to the present. She counselled him to
control himself; in that case he might for one moment go to the
chamber-door and assure himself by the silence that his wife was resting.
She brought permission from the surgeons and doctor, on his promise to be
still.

Redworth supported Sir Lukin tottering out.

Dacier had risen. He was petrified by Diana's face, and thought of her as
whirled from him in a storm, bearing the marks of it. Her underlip hung
for short breaths; the big drops of her recent anguish still gathered on
her brows; her eyes were tearless, lustreless; she looked ancient in
youth, and distant by a century, like a tall woman of the vaults, issuing
white-ringed, not of our light.

She shut her mouth for strength to speak to him.

He said: 'You are not ill? You are strong?'

'I? Oh, strong. I will sit. I cannot be absent longer than two minutes.
The trial of her strength is to come. If it were courage, we might be
sure. The day is fine?'

'A perfect August day.'

'I held her through it. I am thankful to heaven it was no other hand than
mine. She wished to spare me. She was glad of her Tony when the time
came. I thought I was a coward--I could have changed with her to save
her; I am a strong woman, fit to submit to that work. I should not have
borne it as she did. She expected to sink under it. All her dispositions
were made for death-bequests to servants and to . . . to friends: every
secret liking they had, thought of!'

Diana clenched her hands.

'I hope!' Dacier said.

'You shall hear regularly. Call at Sir William's house to-morrow. He
sleeps here to-night. The suspense must last for days. It is a question
of vital power to bear the shock. She has a mind so like a flying spirit
that, just before the moment, she made Mr. Lanyan Thomson smile by
quoting some saying of her Tony's.'

'Try by-and-by to recollect it,' said Dacier.

'And you were with that poor man! How did he pass the terrible time? I
pitied him.'

'He suffered; he prayed.'

'It was the best he could do. Mr. Redworth was as he always is at the
trial, a pillar. Happy the friend who knows him for one! He never thinks
of himself in a crisis. He is sheer strength to comfort and aid. They
will drive you to the station with Mr. Thomson. He re