and deceptive of
the later human masks. She had besides, be it owned, a triumph in conjuring a
sentence of her friend's, like a sword's edge, to meet them; for she was boiling
angrily at the ironical destiny which had given to those Two a beclouding of her
beloved, whom she could have rebuked in turn for her insane caprice of passion.
    But when her beloved stood-up to greet Mrs. Percy Dacier, all idea save
tremulous admiration of the valiant woman, who had been wounded nigh to death,
passed from Emma's mind. Diana tempered her queenliness to address the favoured
lady with smiles and phrases of gentle warmth, of goodness of nature; and it
became a halo rather than a personal eclipse that she cast.
    Emma looked at Dacier. He wore the prescribed conventional air, subject in
half a minute to a rapid blinking of the eyelids. His wife could have been
inimically imagined fascinated and dwindling. A spot of colour came to her
cheeks. She likewise began to blink.
    The happy couple bowed, proceeding; and Emma had Dacier's back for a study.
We score on that flat slate of man, unattractive as it is to hostile
observations, and unprotected, the device we choose. Her harshest, was the
positive thought that he had taken the woman best suited to him. Doubtless, he
was a man to prize the altar-candle above the lamp of day. She fancied the
back-view of him shrunken and straitened: perhaps a mere hostile fancy: though
it was conceivable that he should desire as little of these meetings as
possible. Eclipses are not courted.
    The specially womanly exultation of Emma Dunstane in her friend's noble
attitude, seeing how their sex had been struck to the dust for a trifling error,
easily to be overlooked by a manful lover, and had asserted its dignity in
physical and moral splendour, in self-mastery and benign-ness, was unshared by
Diana. As soon as the business of the expedition was over, her orders were
issued for the sale of the lease of her house and all it contained. »I would
sell Danvers too,« she said, »but the creature declines to be treated as
merchandize. It seems I have a faithful servant; very much like my life, not
quite to my taste; the one thing out of the wreck! - with my dog!«
    Before quitting her house for the return to Copsley, she had to grant Mr.
Alexander Hepburn, post-haste from his Caledonia, a private interview. She came
out