 grossly unlike in likeness. The
possibility of the man's doing or saying this and that adumbrates the
improbability: he had something of the character capable of it, too much good
sense for the performance. We would think so, and still the shadow is round our
thoughts. Lord Dannisburgh was a man of ministerial tact, official ability,
Pagan morality; an excellent general manager, if no genius in statecraft. But he
was careless of social opinion, unbuttoned, and a laugher. We know that he could
be chivalrous toward women, notwithstanding the perplexities he brought on them,
and this the Dorset-Diary does not show.
    His chronicle is less mischievous as regards Mrs. Warwick than the
paragraphs of Perry Wilkinson, a gossip presenting an image of perpetual
chatter, like the waxen-faced street advertizements of light and easy dentistry.
He has no belief, no disbelief; names the pro-party and the con; recites the
case, and discreetly, over-discreetly; and pictures the trial, tells the list of
witnesses, records the verdict: so the case went, and some thought one thing,
some another thing: only it is reported for positive that a miniature of the
incriminated lady was cleverly smuggled over to the jury, and juries sitting
upon these cases, ever since their bedazzlement by Phryne, as you know. ... And
then he relates an anecdote of the husband, said to have been not a bad fellow
before he married his Diana; - and the naming of the Goddess reminds him that
the second person in the indictment is now everywhere called The elderly
shepherd; - but immediately after the bridal bells this husband became sour and
insupportable; and either she had the trick of putting him publicly in the
wrong, or he lost all shame in playing the churlish domestic tyrant. The
instances are incredible of a gentleman. Perry Wilkinson gives us two or three;
one on the authority of a personal friend who witnessed the scene; at the
Warwick whist-table, where the fair Diana would let loose her silvery laugh in
the intervals. She was hardly out of her teens, and should have been dancing
instead of fastened to a table. A difference of fifteen years in the ages of the
wedded pair accounts poorly for the husband's conduct, however solemn a business
the game of whist. We read that he burst out at last, with bitter mimicry, »yang
- yang - yang!« and killed the bright laugh, shot it dead. She had outraged the
decorum of the square-table only while the cards were making. Perhaps her
too
