Sir Lukin cried. 'Diana,
Warwick wouldn't leave the room without a certainty. I dread the look of
those men; I shall have to shake their hands! And so I do, with all
my heart: only--But God bless them! But we must go in, if she's coming
down.'

They entered the house, and sat in the 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;