zealous inquirers were profitable, though Diana, in acknowledging it to
herself, reserved a decided preference for her foregone ethereal mood,
larger, and untroubled by the presence of a man. The suspicion Emma had
sown was not excited to an alarming activity; but she began to question:
could the best of men be simply--a woman's friend?--was not long service
rather less than a proof of friendship? She could be blind when her
heart was on fire for another. Her passion for her liberty, however,
received no ominous warning to look to the defences. He was the same
blunt speaker, and knotted his brows as queerly as ever at Arthur, in a
transparent calculation of how this fellow meant to gain his livelihood.
She wilfully put it to the credit of Arthur's tact that his elder was
amiable, without denying her debt to the good man for leaving her illness
and her appearance unmentioned. He forbore even to scan her features.
Diana's wan contemplativeness, in which the sparkle of meaning slowly
rose to flash, as we see a bubble rising from the deeps of crystal
waters, caught at his heart while he talked his matter-of-fact. But her
instinct of a present safety was true. She and Arthur discovered--and it
set her first meditating whether she did know the man so very accurately
--that he had printed, for private circulation, when at Harrow School, a
little book, a record of his observations in nature. Lady Dunstane was
the casual betrayer. He shrugged at the nonsense of a boy's publishing;
anybody's publishing he held for a doubtful proof of sanity. His excuse
was, that he had not published opinions. Let us observe, and assist in
our small sphere; not come mouthing to the footlights!

'We retire,' Diana said, for herself and Arthur.

'The wise thing, is to avoid the position that enforces publishing,' said
he, to the discomposure of his raw junior.