we must hold back a league.  I have learnt it.  You will judge whether he disrespects me.  As for him, he is a man; at his worst, not one of the worst; at his best, better than very many.  There, now, Emma, you have me stripped and burning; there is my full confession.  Except for this—­yes, one thing further—­that I do rage at the ridicule, and could choose, but for you, to have given the world cause to revile me, or think me romantic.  Something or somebody to suffer for would really be agreeable.  It is a singular fact, I have not known what this love is, that they talk about.  And behold me marched into Smithfield!—­society’s heretic, if you please.  I must own I think it hard.’

Emma chafed her cold hand softly.

‘It is hard; I understand it,’ she murmured.  ’And is your Sunday visit to us in the list of offences?’

‘An item.’

‘You gave me a happy day.’

‘Then it counts for me in heaven.’

‘He set spies on you?’

‘So we may presume.’

Emma went through a sphere of tenuious reflections in a flash.

’He will rue it.  Perhaps now . . . he may now be regretting his wretched frenzy.  And Tony could pardon; she has the power of pardoning in her heart.’

’Oh! certainly, dear.  But tell me why it is you speak to-night rather unlike the sedate, philosophical Emma; in a tone-well, tolerably sentimental?’

‘I am unaware of it,’ said Emma, who could have retorted with a like reproach.  ’I am anxious, I will not say at present for your happiness, for your peace; and I have a hope that possibly a timely word from some friend—­Lukin or another—­might induce him to consider.’

‘To pardon me, do you mean?’ cried Diana, flushing sternly.

‘Not pardon.  Suppose a case of faults on both sides.’

’You address a faulty person, my dear.  But do you know that you are hinting at a reconcilement?’

‘Might it not be?’

’Open your eyes to what it involves.  I trust I can pardon.  Let him go his ways, do his darkest, or repent.  But return to the roof of the “basest of men,” who was guilty of “the unpardonable cowardice”?  You expect me to be superhuman.  When I consent to that, I shall be out of my woman’s skin, which he has branded.  Go back to him!’ She was taken with a shudder of head and limbs.  ’No; I really have the power of pardoning, and I am bound to; for among my debts to him, this present exemption, that is like liberty dragging a chain, or, say, an escaped felon wearing his manacles, should count.  I am sensible of my obligation.  The price I pay for it is an immovable patch-attractive to male idiots, I have heard, and a mark of scorn to females.  Between the two the remainder of my days will be lively.  “Out, out, damned spot!” But it will not.  And not on the hand—­on the forehead!  We’ll talk of it no longer.  I have sent a note, with an enclosure, to my lawyers.  I sell The Crossways, if I have the married woman’s right to any scrap of property, for money to scatter fees.’