Diana writ dutifully to her mother, now removed with her husband to Maidstone in Kent, and had a letter in return beseeching her rather to return to her stepfather’s roof than so involve her good name. “Bethink you,” the letter continued, “that with the reputation you have made at Mr. Gay’s playhouse, you’ll never lack for bread and plenty and may hope an excellent marriage one of these days. ’Tis to be allowed the stage has its dangers, but prudence and courage (which your father’s daughter should not lack) will bear you through as it has done to the present. Marriage is and must ever be your object.” And with much more to the same purpose did the mother instruct her daughter,—thus concluding: “I would have you build no hope on the Duke’s promise to marry, for when men have attained their wishes by an easier road, marriage is the most nauseous word to them, and furthermore his greatness and riches make it an impossibility from which reason and all his friends will turn him. If you hold out against him your chance is the better, as things desired and withheld grow the more valuable. I would therefore have you by no means break with him but observe a careful chastity that shall enhance your worth, and if, as I hear, her Grace’s health be infirm, your constancy may meet its return. A waiting patience is therefore what I would have you practise.” There was a further suggestion that if, in all honour, his Grace should settle an income on her, on her concession of giving up the playhouse to please him, it might well be accepted as a return for her sacrifice. And so ended. The writing was the hand of her mamma, but she knew the sentiments for those of Mr. Fenton and liked them the less. ’Twas obvious he had no expectations from the Duke’s bounty. To her this must appear base and ungenerous and tinged with a low cunning she could not commend in herself should she follow it. But lest this be partiality she laid the letter before her Duchess, on the day of their parting. “Pah!” cries her Grace, flicking it on the floor. “Take it away, Diana. It reeks of—I won’t say what, because your mamma writ it if she did not think it. If virtue is to be a marketable commodity let it be open dealing, say I, and not served like a French ragoût with a sauce of cant. By these few and simple prescriptions you may become as cunning and accomplished a little wanton as lives in Drury Lane, and this even within the bounds of marriage. I protest I know women honourably married in the world’s eye that I hold contemptible for the very ring’s sake that shields them. O child, we know much of what our teachers tell us in these matters and on the other side have nothing but the promptings of our own love and honesty, and ’tis hard to choose for very fear’s sake.”