t to crush those fractional daughters of mischief. She
was a really good woman of the world, heading a multitude; the same
whom you are accustomed to hear exalted; lucky in having had a guided
girlhood, a thick-curtained prudence; and in having stock in the moral
funds, shares in the sentimental tramways. Wherever the world laid
its hoards or ran its lines, she was found, and forcible enough to be
eminent; though at fixed hours of the day, even as she washed her hands,
she abjured worldliness: a performance that cleansed her. If she did
not make morality appear loveable to the objects of her dislike, it was
owing to her want of brains to see the origin, nature and right ends
of morality. But a world yet more deficient than she, esteemed her
cordially for being a bulwark of the present edifice; which looks a
solid structure when the microscope is not applied to its components.

Supposing Percy Dacier a dishonourable tattler as well as an icy lover,
and that Lady Wathin, through his bride, had become privy to the secret
between him and Diana? There is reason to think that she would have held
it in terror over the baneful woman, but not have persecuted her: for
she was by no means the active malignant of theatrical plots. No, she
would have charged it upon the possession of brains by women, and have
had a further motive for inciting the potent dignitary her husband
to employ his authority to repress the sex's exercise of those fell
weapons, hurtful alike to them and all coming near them.

So extreme was her dread of Mrs. Warwick, that she drove from the
London railway station to see Constance and be reassured by her tranquil
aspect.

Sweet Constance and her betrothed Percy were together, examining a
missal.

Lady Dunstane despatched a few words of the facts to Diana. She hoped to
hear from her; rather hoped, for the moment, not to see her. No answer
came. The great day of the nuptials came and passed. She counted on
her husband's appearance the next morning, as the good gentleman made a
point of visiting her, to entertain the wife he adored, whenever he had
a wallet of gossip that would overlay the blank of his absence. He had
been to the church of the wedding--he did not say with whom: all the
world was there; and he rapturously described the ceremony, stating that
it set women weeping and caused him to behave like a fool.

'You are impressionable,' said his wife.

He murmured something in praise of the institution