Lady Dunstane
often thought when admiring the advance of Diana's beauty in queenliness, for
never did woman carry her head more grandly, more thrillingly make her presence
felt; and if only she had been an actress showing herself nightly on a London
stage, she would before now have met the superb appreciation, melancholy to
reflect upon!
    Diana regained her happy composure at Copsley. She had, as she imagined, no
ambition. The dulness of the place conveyed a charm to a nature recovering from
disturbance to its clear smooth flow. Air, light, books, and her friend, these
good things she had; they were all she wanted. She rode, she walked, with Sir
Lukin or Mr. Redworth, for companion; or with Saturday and Sunday guests, Lord
Larrian, her declared admirer, among them. »Twenty years younger!« he said to
her, shrugging, with a merry smile drawn a little at the corners to sober
sourness; and she vowed to her friend that she would not have had the heart to
refuse him. »Though,« said she, »speaking generally, I cannot tell you what a
foreign animal a husband would appear in my kingdom.« Her experience had wakened
a sexual aversion, of some slight kind, enough to make her feminine pride
stipulate for perfect independence, that she might have the calm out of which
imagination spreads wing. Imagination had become her broader life, and on such
an earth, under such skies, a husband who is not the fountain of it, certainly
is a foreign animal: he is a discordant note. He contracts the ethereal world,
deadens radiancy. He is gross fact, a leash, a muzzle, harness, a hood, whatever
is detestable to the free limbs and senses. It amused Lady Dunstane to hear
Diana say, one evening when their conversation fell by hazard on her future,
that the idea of a convent was more welcome to her than the most splendid
marriage. »For,« she added, »as I am sure I shall never know anything of this
love they rattle about and rave about, I shall do well to keep to my good single
path; and I have a warning within me that a step out of it will be a wrong one -
for me, dearest!«
    She wished her view of the yoke to be considered purely personal, drawn from
no examples and comparisons. The excellent Sir Lukin was passing a great deal of
his time in London. His wife had not a word of blame for him; he was a
respectful husband, and attentive when present