E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Matthew Wheaton, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illuminations. See 37974-h.htm or 37974-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/37974/pg37974-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/37974/37974-h.zip) Project Gutenberg also has Volumes I and III of this work. See Volume I: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37973 Volume III: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37975 Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/dianatempest02chol DIANA TEMPEST. by MARY CHOLMONDELEY, Author of "The Danvers Jewels," "Sir Charles Danvers," etc. In Three Volumes. VOL. II. London: Richard Bentley & Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. 1893. (All rights reserved.) DIANA TEMPEST. CHAPTER I. "The fact is, I have never loved any one well enough to put myself into a noose for them. It _is_ a noose, you know."--GEORGE ELIOT. It was the middle of July. The season had reached the climax which precedes a collapse. The heat was intense. The pace had been too great to last. The rich sane were already on their way to Scotch moor or Norwegian river; the rich insane and the poor remained, and people with daughters--assiduously entertaining the dwindling numbers of the "uncertain, coy, and hard to please" _jeunesse dorée_ of the present day. There were some great weddings fixed for the end of July, proving that marriage was not extinct,--prospective weddings which, like iron rivets, held the crumbling fabric of the season together. If the unusual heat had driven away half the world, still the greater part of the little world mentioned in these pages remained. Not quite all, for Sir Henry and Lady Verelst had departed rather suddenly for Norway, and Lord Frederick was drinking the water at Homburg or Aix; and thriving on a beverage which never passed his lips without admixture in his own country, except in connection with the toothbrush. But John and his aunt Miss Fane were still in the large cool house in Park Lane. Lord Hemsworth was still baking himself for no apparent reason in his rooms over his club. Mrs. Courtenay and Di were still in town, because they could not afford to go until their country visits began. "Oh, granny," said Di one afternoon as they sat together in the darkened drawing-room, "let us cut everything. Do be ill, and let me write round to say we have been obliged to leave town." Mrs. Courtenay shook her head. "We can't go till we have somewhere to go to, and we are not due at Archelot till the first of August."