“Now, of course, she insists on my marrying somebody with money.  As if any chaperon would look at me!  Two years ago I did make up to a nice girl—­a real nice girl—­and only a thousand a year!—­nothing so tremendous, after all.  But her mother twice carried her off, in the middle of a rattling ball, because she had engaged herself to me—­just like sending a naughty child to bed!  And the next time the mother made me take her down to supper, and expounded to me her view of a chaperon’s duties:  ’My business, Mr. Forbes’—­you should have seen her stony eye—­’is to mar, not to make.  The suitable marriages make themselves, or are made in heaven.  I have nothing to do with them, except to keep a fair field.  The unsuitable marriages have to be prevented, and will be prevented.  You understand me?’ ‘Perfectly,’ I said.  ’I understand perfectly.  To mar is human, and to make divine?  Thank you.  Have some more jelly?  No?  Shall I ask for your carriage?  Good-night.’  But Lady Niton won’t believe a word of it!  She thinks I’ve only to ask and have.  She’ll be rude to Ettie, and I shall have to punch her head—­metaphorically.  And how can you punch a person’s head when they’ve lent you money?”

Diana could only laugh, and commend him to his Ettie, who, to judge from her letters, was a girl of sense, and might be trusted to get him out of his scrape.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Ferrier, the man of affairs, statesman, thinker, and pessimist, found in his new friendship with Diana at once that “agreement,” that relaxation, which men of his sort can only find in the society of those women who, without competing with them, can yet by sympathy and native wit make their companionship abundantly worth while; and also, a means, as it were, of vicarious amends, which he very eagerly took.

He was, in fact, ashamed for Lady Lucy; humiliated, moreover, by his own small influence with her in a vital matter.  And both shame and humiliation took the form of tender consideration for Lady Lucy’s victim.

It did not at all diminish the value of his kindness, that—­most humanly—­it largely showed itself in what many people would have considered egotistical confessions to a charming girl.  Diana found a constant distraction, a constant interest, in listening.  Her solitary life with her scholar father had prepared her for such a friend.  In the overthrow of love and feeling, she bravely tried to pick up the threads of the old intellectual pleasures.  And both Ferrier and Chide, two of the ablest men of their generation, were never tired of helping her thus to recover herself.  Chide was an admirable story-teller; and his mere daily life had stored him with tales, humorous and grim; while Ferrier talked history and poetry, as they strolled about Siena or Perugia; and, as he sat at night among the letters of the day, had a score of interesting or amusing comments to make upon the politics of the moment.