Diana, praising the speaker, referred the whole truth in that to the material element of her metaphor.
She was more astonished by Whitmonby's candid chiding; but with him she could fence, and men are easily diverted. She had sent for him, to bring him and Percy Dacier together to a conference. Unaware of the project, he took the opportunity of their privacy to speak of the great station open to her in London being imperilled; and he spoke of 'tongues,' and ahem! A very little would have induced him to fill that empty vocable with a name.
She had to pardon the critic in him for an unpleasant review of her hapless CANTATRICE; and as a means of evasion, she mentioned the poor book and her slaughter of the heroine, that he had complained of.
'I killed her; I could not let her live. You were unjust in accusing the authoress of heartlessness.'
'If I did, I retract,' said he. 'She steers too evidently from the centre of the vessel. She has the organ in excess.'
'Proof that it is not squandered.'
'The point concerns direction.'
'Have I made so bad a choice of my friends?'
'It is the common error of the sprightly to suppose that in parrying a thrust they blind our eyes.'
'The world sees always what it desires to see, Mr. Whitmonby.'