 I return. An English professor of his
native tongue at the Lycée at Caen told me on my way here that for twenty
shillings a week you may live in royal ease round about Harcourt. So we have our
bed and board in prospect if fortune fails us, Danvers.«
    »I would rather die in England, ma'am,« was the maid's reply.
    Dacier set foot on his carriage-step. He drew a long breath to say a short
farewell, and he and Diana parted.
    They parted as the plainest of sincere good friends, each at heart
respecting the other for the repression of that which their hearts craved; any
word of which might have carried them headlong, bound together on a
Mazeppa-race, with scandal for the hounding wolves, and social ruin for the
rocks and torrents.
    Dacier was the thankfuller, the most admiring of the two; at the same time
the least satisfied. He saw the abyss she had aided him in escaping; and it was
refreshful to look abroad after his desperate impulse. Prominent as he stood
before the world, he could not think without a shudder of behaving like a young
frenetic of the passion. Those whose aim is at the leadership of the English
people know, that however truly based the charges of hypocrisy, soundness of
moral fibre runs throughout the country and is the national integrity, which may
condone old sins for present service, but will not have present sins to flout
it. He was in tune with the English character. The passion was in him
nevertheless, and the stronger for a slow growth that confirmed its union of the
mind and heart. Her counsel fortified him, her suggestions opened springs; her
phrases were golden-lettered in his memory; and more, she had worked an
extraordinary change in his views of life and aptitude for social converse: he
acknowledged it with genial candour. Through her he was encouraged, led, excited
to sparkle with the witty, feel new gifts, or a greater breadth of nature; and
thanking her, he became thirstily susceptible to her dark beauty; he claimed to
have found the key of her, and he prized it. She was not passionless: the blood
flowed warm. Proud, chaste, she was nobly spirited; having an intellectual
refuge from the besiegings of the blood; a rock-fortress. The wife no wife
appeared to him, striking the higher elements of the man, the commonly masculine
also. - Would he espouse her, had he the chance? - to-morrow! this instant! With
her to back him, he would
