 two endeared the hours to them. They were
aware that the English of the period would have laughed a couple of women to
scorn for venturing on them, and they were not a little hostile in consequence,
and shot their epigrams profusely, applauding the keener that appeared to score
the giant bulk of their intolerant enemy, who holds the day, but not the morrow.
Us too he holds for the day, to punish us if we have temporal cravings. He
scatters his gifts to the abject; tossing to us rebels bare dog-biscuit. But the
life of the spirit is beyond his region; we have our morrow in his day when we
crave nought of him. Diana and Emma delighted to discover that they were each
the rebel of their earlier and less experienced years, each a member of the
malcontent minor faction, the salt of earth, to whom their salt must serve for
nourishment, as they admitted, relishing it determinedly, not without
gratification.
    Sir Lukin was busy upon his estate in Scotland. They summoned young Arthur
Rhodes to the island, that he might have a taste of the new scenes. Diana was
always wishing for his instruction and refreshment; and Redworth came to spend a
Saturday and Sunday with them, and showed his disgust of the idle boy, as usual,
at the same time consulting them on the topic of furniture for the Berkshire
mansion he had recently bought, rather vaunting the Spanish pictures his
commissioner in Madrid was transmitting. The pair of rebels, vexed by his
treatment of the respectful junior, took him for an incarnation of their enemy,
and pecked and worried the man astonishingly. He submitted to it like the
placable giant. Yes, he was a Liberal, and furnishing and decorating the house
in the stability of which he trusted. Why not? We must accept the world as it
is, try to improve it by degrees. - Not so: humanity will not wait for you, the
victims are shrieking beneath the bricks of your enormous edifice, behind the
canvas of your pictures. »But you may really say that luxurious yachting is an
odd kind of insurgency,« avowed Diana. »It's the tangle we are in.«
    »It's the coat we have to wear; and why fret at it for being comfortable?«
    »I don't half enough, when I think of my shivering neighbours.«
    »Money is of course a rough test of virtue,« said Redworth. »We have no
other general test.«
    Money! The ladies proclaimed it a mere material test; Diana, gazing on sunny
