“Excellent, my Lady, excellent! If my heartfelt admiration would make them vain, I wish to God I might begin with your lovely self. My admiration is at your feet.”
She disengaged herself all laughing, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks like living roses beneath her gold cap and veil,—the Prince catching at her hand would have detained her, but she joined the Duchess of Queensbury.
Baltimore looked after her with a sickening anger and regret. They had parted indeed.
CHAPTER XXI
WAS a moving day for her Grace of Queensbury and Diana when the Duke removed her to his fine house in Pall Mall, for not only did it cause both a pang to part after so many months of mutual kindness, but in such a case must be many misgivings however courageously hid. That he should regard her as his wife was much, and it seemed each day that past added force to his tenderness, yet it must be allowed that her position at best was beset with thorns he could not blunt.
If such a case be taken lightly and gallantly—the bond of a summer’s day to be broke at nightfall—the world will laugh and let it go by with scarce a censure, but if any bold persons, breaking this rule, succeed not in getting the laugh on their side it will certainly be much against them, and they will be confounded with persons with whom they have nothing in common.
So Diana must reflect that the time might come when this situation would gall the Duke and she be the cause of it. The rude familiarities, the railleries provoked, he could deal with with his sword, but there are pangs subtle as air that cannot be so warded. He was not plagued himself with such considerations for, as men are used in love, he saw only the present deliverance from loneliness, the comfort he expected in her sweet society and all the delights of her beauties of mind and person.