bes'--you should have seen her
stony eye--'is to _mar_, not to make. The suitable marriages make
themselves, or are made in heaven. I have nothing to do with them,
except to keep a fair field. The unsuitable marriages have to be
prevented, and will be prevented. You understand me?' 'Perfectly,' I
said. 'I understand perfectly. To _mar_ is human, and to make divine?
Thank you. Have some more jelly? No? Shall I ask for your carriage?
Good-night.' But Lady Niton won't believe a word of it! She thinks I've
only to ask and have. She'll be rude to Ettie, and I shall have to punch
her head--metaphorically. And how can you punch a person's head when
they've lent you money?"

Diana could only laugh, and commend him to his Ettie, who, to judge from
her letters, was a girl of sense, and might be trusted to get him out of
his scrape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier, the man of affairs, statesman, thinker, and
pessimist, found in his new friendship with Diana at once that
"agreement," that relaxation, which men of his sort can only find in the
society of those women who, without competing with them, can yet by
sympathy and native wit make their companionship abundantly worth while;
and also, a means, as it were, of vicarious amends, which he very
eagerly took.

He was, in fact, ashamed for Lady Lucy; humiliated, moreover, by his own
small influence with her in a vital matter. And both shame and
humiliation took the form of tender consideration for Lady
Lucy's victim.

It did not at all diminish the value of his kindness, that--most
humanly--it largely showed itself in what many people would have
considered egotistical confessions to a charming girl. Diana found a
constant distraction, a constant interest, in listening. Her solitary
life with her scholar father had prepared her for such a friend. In the
overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads
of the old intellectual pleasures. And both Ferrier and Chide, two of
the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus
to recover herself. Chide was an admirable story-teller; and his mere
daily life had stored him with tales, humorous and grim; while Ferrier
talked history and poetry, as they strolled about Siena or Perugia; and,
as he sat at night among the letters of the day, had a score of
interesting or amusing comments to make upon the politics of the moment.
He reserved his "confessions," of cours