n a right-down
termagant passion is good theatre; because it can't last, at that pace;
and you're sure of your agreeable tableau. Not that I trust her ten
minutes out of sight--or any woman, except one or two; my wife and Diana
Warwick. Trust those you've tried, old boy. Diana Warwick ought to be
taught to thank you; though I don't know how it's to be done.'

'The fact of it is,' Redworth frowned and rose, 'I've done mischief. I
had no right to mix myself in it. I'm seldom caught off my feet by an
impulse; but I was. I took the fever from you.'

He squared his figure at the window, and looked up on a driving sky.

'Come, let's play open cards, Tom Redworth,' said Sir Lukin, leaving the
table and joining his friend by the window. 'You moral men are doomed
to be marrying men, always; and quite right. Not that one doesn't hear a
roundabout thing or two about you: no harm. Very much the contrary:--as
the world goes. But you're the man to marry a wife; and if I guess the
lady, she's a sensible girl and won't be jealous. I 'd swear she only
waits for asking.'

'Then you don't guess the lady,' said Redworth.

'Mary Paynham?'

The desperate half-laugh greeting the name convinced more than a dozen
denials.

Sir Lukin kept edging round for a full view of the friend who shunned
inspection. 'But is it?... can it be? it must be, after all!... why, of
course it is! But the thing staring us in the face is just what we never
see. Just the husband for her!--and she's the wife! Why, Diana Warwick
's the very woman, of course! I remember I used to think so before she
was free to wed.'

'She is not of that opinion.' Redworth blew a heavy breath; and it
should be chronicled as a sigh; but it was hugely masculine.

'Because you didn't attack, the moment she was free; that 's what upset
my calculations,' the sagacious gentleman continued, for a vindication
of his acuteness: then seizing the reply: 'Refuses? you don't mean to
say you're the man to take a refusal? and from a green widow in the
blush? Did you see her cheeks when she was peeping at the letter in her
hand? She colours at half a word--takes the lift of a finger for Hymen
coming. And lots of fellows are after her; I know it from Emmy. But
you're not the man to be refused. You're her friend--her champion.
That woman Fryar-Gunnett would have it you were the favoured lover, and
sneered at my talk of old friendship. Women are always down dead on the
facts; can't put them off