in consequence, and shot their epigrams profusely, applauding the keener
that appeared to score the giant bulk of their intolerant enemy, who
holds the day, but not the morrow. Us too he holds for the day, to
punish us if we have temporal cravings. He scatters his gifts to the
abject; tossing to us rebels bare dog-biscuit. But the life of the
spirit is beyond his region; we have our morrow in his day when we crave
nought of him. Diana and Emma delighted to discover that they were each
the rebel of their earlier and less experienced years; each a member of
the malcontent minor faction, the salt of earth, to whom their salt must
serve for nourishment, as they admitted, relishing it determinedly, not
without gratification.

Sir Lukin was busy upon his estate in Scotland. They summoned young
Arthur Rhodes to the island, that he might have a taste of the new
scenes. Diana was always wishing for his instruction and refreshment;
and Redworth came to spend a Saturday and Sunday with them, and showed
his disgust of the idle boy, as usual, at the same time consulting them
on the topic of furniture for the Berkshire mansion he had recently
bought, rather vaunting the Spanish pictures his commissioner in Madrid
was transmitting. The pair of rebels, vexed by his treatment of the
respectful junior, took him for an incarnation of their enemy, and pecked
and worried the man astonishingly. He submitted to it like the placable
giant. Yes, he was a Liberal, and furnishing and decorating the house in
the stability of which he trusted. Why not? We must accept the world as
it is, try to improve it by degrees.--Not so: humanity will not wait for
you, the victims are shrieking beneath the bricks of your enormous
edifice, behind the canvas of your pictures. 'But you may really say
that luxurious yachting is an odd kind of insurgency,' avowed Diana.
'It's the tangle we are in.'