his uncle's pattern for the early period
of life. Uncle and nephew went their separate ways, rarely meeting, though their
exchange of esteem was cordial.
    Thinking over his abrupt retirement from the crowded semicircle, Diana felt
her position pinch her, she knew not why.
    Lady Dunstane was as indefatigable by day as by night in the business of
acting goddess to her beloved Tony, whom she assured that the service, instead
of exhausting, gave her such healthfulness as she had imagined herself to have
lost for ever. The word was passed, and invitations poured in to choice
conversational breakfasts, private afternoon concerts, all the humming season's
assemblies. Mr. Warwick's treatment of his wife was taken by implication for
lunatic; wherever she was heard or seen, he had no case; a jury of some hundreds
of both sexes, ready to be sworn, pronounced against him. Only the personal
enemies of the lord in the suit presumed to doubt, and they exercised the
discretion of a minority.
    But there is an upper middle class below the aristocratic, boasting an
aristocracy of morals, and eminently persuasive of public opinion, if not
commanding it. Previous to the relaxation, by amendment, of a certain legal
process, this class was held to represent the austerity of the country. At
present a relaxed austerity is represented; and still the bulk of the members
are of fair repute, though not quite on the level of their pretensions. They
were then, while more sharply divided from the titular superiors they are
socially absorbing, very powerful to brand a woman's character, whatever her
rank might be; having innumerable agencies and avenues for that high purpose, to
say nothing of the printing-press. Lady Dunstane's anxiety to draw them over to
the cause of her friend set her thinking of the influential Mrs. Cramborne
Wathin, with whom she was distantly connected; the wife of a potent
serjeant-at-law fast mounting to the Bench and knighthood; the centre of a
circle, and not strangely that, despite her deficiency in the arts and graces,
for she had wealth and a cook, a husband proud of his wine-cellar, and the
ambition to rule; all the rewards, together with the expectations, of the
virtuous. She was a lady of incisive features bound in stale parchment.
Complexion she had none, but she had spotlessness of skin, and sons and
daughters just resembling her, like cheaper editions of a precious quarto of a
perished type. You discerned the imitation of the type, you acknowledged the
inferior compositor. Mr. Cramborne