'She reads you as clearly in the dark as if you were present with her.'
'Oh! why am I not ten years older!' Diana cried, and tried to face round to him, and stopped paralyzed. 'Ten years older, I could discuss my situation, as an old woman of the world, and use my wits to defend myself.'
'And then you would not dream of flight before it!'
'No, she does not read me: no! She saw that I might come to The Crossways. She—no one but myself can see the wisdom of my holding aloof, in contempt of this baseness.'
'And of allowing her to sink under that which your presence would arrest.
Her strength will not support it.'
'Emma! Oh, cruel!' Diana sprang up to give play to her limbs. She dropped on another chair. 'Go I must, I cannot turn back. She saw my old attachment to this place. It was not difficult to guess . . . Who but I can see the wisest course for me!'
'It comes to this, that the blow aimed at you in your absence will strike her, and mortally,' said Redworth.
'Then I say it is terrible to have a friend,' said Diana, with her bosom heaving.
'Friendship, I fancy, means one heart between two.'
His unstressed observation hit a bell in her head, and set it reverberating. She and Emma had spoken, written, the very words. She drew forth her Emma's letter from under her left breast, and read some half-blinded lines.