e
to say than "Heave the poor devil into a gig, and drive him up to his
own door and put him down there. It is the best you can do for
him,--the fool was always so easily upset; and it will do for her at
the same time--give her something to hold her cursed high white head
in the air and turn up her nose for; serve her impudence right for
taking it upon her to act as private policeman to Jarvie." They sent
him home to her, a beast who had been with wild beasts. They did it
for the most part heedlessly, in jollity and jeering; but they did it
not the less effectually. The wild beast of sensuality had him again;
not one devil, but seven, had entered into him; and reigning king over
the others, an insensate devil of cruel jealousy of his wife, of his
gaoler, resenting her efforts, defying her pains.

Diana did not take Gervase Norgate's backsliding to her very heart, was
not wounded to death by it as if she had loved him. But she did not give
him up. She was a tenacious woman, and Gervase Norgate's salvation was
her one chance of moral redemption from the base barter of her
marriage. She did not reproach him: she was too proud a woman, too cold
to him, to goad and sting him by reproaches. They might have served her
end better than the terrible aggravation of her silence. She was just
too, and she did not accuse him unduly. She said to herself, "He is a
poor, misguided fellow, a brute where drink is concerned: when I married
him, that was as clear as day. I have no right to complain, though he
resume his bad courses." Still she left no stone unturned; she was
prepared, as before, to ride and walk and play with him at all hours;
she ignored his frequent absences and the condition in which he came
back, as far as possible. She abetted old Miles in clearing away,
silently and swiftly, the miserable evidences of mischief. She smuggled
out of sight, and huddled into oblivion, battered hats, broken pipes and
sticks, stopperless flasks, cracked, smoky lanterns--concealing them
with a decent, decorous, sacred duplicity even from Aunt Tabby, who
trotted across the country on her father's old trotting mare, took her
observations, and departed, shaking her head and moralizing on the text,
"Cast not your pearls before swine."

Diana sat at her forlorn post in the billiard-room, or by the
cribbage-board, or at the piano which Gervase had got for her. She had
some small skill to play and sing to him, and was indefatigable in
learning th