the formal one of invitation.

'Powers of blarney, have you forsaken a daughter of Erin?' cried Diana.
'Here is a friend who has a craving for you, and I talk sense to him. I
have written to none of my set since I last left London.'

She pacified him by doses of cajolery new to her tongue. She liked him,
abhorred the thought of losing any of her friends, so the cajoling
sentences ran until Westlake betrayed an inflammable composition,
and had to be put out, and smoked sullenly. Her resources were tried
in restoring him to reason. The months of absence from London appeared
to have transformed her world. Tonans was moderate. The great editor
rebuked her for her prolonged absence from London, not so much because it
discrowned her as Queen of the Salon, but candidly for its rendering her
service less to him. Everything she knew of men and affairs was to him
stale.

'How do you get to the secrets?' she asked.

'By sticking to the centre of them,' he said.

'But how do you manage to be in advance and act the prophet?'

'Because I will have them at any price, and that is known.'

She hinted at the peccant City Company.

'I think I have checked the mining mania, as I did the railway,' said he;
'and so far it was a public service. There's no checking of maniacs.'