It was one of the royal days of a New England autumn; the air clear and bracing and spicy; the light golden and glowing, and yet softened to the dreamiest, richest, most bounteous aureole of hope, by a slight impalpable haze; too slight to veil anything, but giving its tender flattery to the landscape nevertheless. And through that to the mind. Who can help but receive it? Suggestions of waveless peace, of endless delight, of a world-full glory that must fill one's life with riches, come through such a light and under such a sky. Diana's life was full already; but she took the promise for all the years that stretched out in the future. The soft autumn sky where the clouds were at rest, having done their work, bore no symbol of the storms that might come beneath the firmament; the purple and gold and crimson of nature's gala dress seemed to fling their soft luxury around the beholder, enfolding him, as it were, from all the dust and the dimness and the dullness of this world's working days for evermore. So it was to Diana; and all the miles of that long drive, joggingly pulled along by Prince, she rode in a chariot of the imagination, traversing fields of thought and of space, now to Evan and now with him; and in her engrossment spoke never a word from the time she mounted into the waggon till they came in sight of Elmfield. And Mrs. Starling had her own subjects for thought, and was as silent on her part. She was thinking all the way what she should do with that letter. Suppose things had gone too far to be stopped? But Diana had told her nothing; she was not bound to know by guess-work. And if this were thebeginningof serious proposals, then it were better known to but herself only. She resolved finally to watch Diana and the Elmfield people this afternoon; she could find out, she thought, whether there were any matter of common interest between them. With all this, Mrs. Starling's temper was not sweetened.
Elmfield was a rare place. Not by the work of art or the craft of the gardener at all; for a cunning workman had never touched its turf or its plantations. Indeed it had no plantations, other than such as were intended for pure use and profit; great fields of Indian corn, and acres of wheat and rye, and a plot of garden cabbages. Mrs. Reverdy's power of reform had reached only the household affairs. But the corn and the rye and the cabbages were out of sight from the immediate home field; and there the grace of nature had been so great that one almost forgot to wish that anything had been added to it. A little river swept, curving in sweet leisure, through a large level tract of greenest meadows. In front of one of these large curves the house stood, but well back, so that the meadow served instead of a lawn. It had no foreign beauties of tree growth to adorn it, nor needed them; for along the bank of the river, from space to space, irregularly, rose a huge New England elm, giving the shelter of its canopy of branches to a wide spot of turf. The house added nothing to the scene, beyond the human interest; it was just a large old farmhouse, nothing more; draped, however, and half covered up by other elms and a few fir trees. But in front of it lay this wide, sunny, level meadow, with the wilful little stream meandering through, with the stately old trees spotting it and breaking its monotony; and in the distance a soft outline of hills, not too far away, and varied enough to be picturesque, rounded in the whole picture. A picture one would stand long to look at; thoroughly New England and characteristic; gentle, homelike, lovely, with just a touch of wildness, intimating that you were beyond the rules of conventionality. Being New England folk themselves, Mrs. Starling and Diana of course would not read some of these features. They only thought it was a "fine place."
Long before they got there this afternoon, before anybody got there, the ladies of the family gathered upon the wide old piazza.
"It's as a good as a play," said Gertrude Masters. "I never saw such society in my life, and I am curious to know what they will be like."
"You have seen them in church," said Euphemia.
"Yes, but they all feel poky there. I can't tell anything by that.Besides, I don't hear them talk. There's somebody now!"
"Too fast for any of our good sewing friends," said Mrs. Reverdy; "and there is no waggon. It's Mr. Masters, Gerty! How he does ride; and yet he sits as if he was upon a rocking-horse."
"I don't think he'd sit very quiet upon a rocking-horse," said Gerty. And then she lifted up her voice and shouted musically a salutation to the approaching rider.
He alighted presently at the foot of the steps, and throwing the bridle over his horse's head, joined the party.
"So delighted!" said Mrs. Reverdy graciously. "You are come just in time to help us take care of the people."
"Are you going to entertain the nation?" asked Mr Masters.
"Only Pleasant Valley," Mrs. Reverdy answered with her little laugh; which might mean amusement at herself or condescension to Pleasant Valley. "Do you think they will be hard to entertain?"
"I can answer for one," said the minister. "And looking at what there is to see from here, I could almost answer for them all." He was considering the wide sunlit meadow, where the green and the gold, yea, and the very elm shadows, as well as the distant hills, were spiritualized by the slight soft haze.
"Why, what is there to see, Basil?" inquired his cousin Gertrude.
"The sky."
"You don't think that is entertaining, I hope? If you were a polite man, you would have said something else."
She was something to see herself, in one sense, and the something was pretty, too; but very self-conscious. From her flow of curly tresses down to the rosettes on her slippers, every inch of her showed it. Now the best dressing surely avoids this effect; while there is some, and not bad dressing either, which proclaims it in every detail. The crinkles of Gertrude's hair were crisp with it; her French print dress, beautiful in itself, was made with French daintiness and worn with at least equal coquettishness; her wrists bore two or three bracelets both valuable and delicate; and Gertrude's eyes, pretty eyes too, were audacious with the knowledge of all this. Audacious in a sweet, secret way, understand; they were not bold eyes, openly. Her cousin looked her over, with a glance quite recognisant of all I have described, yet destitute of a shade of compliment or even of admiration; very clear and very cool.
"Basil, you don't say all you think!" exclaimed the young lady.
"Not always," said her cousin. "We have it on Solomon's authority, that a 'fool uttereth all his mind. A wise man keepeth it till afterwards.'"
"What are you keeping?"
But the answer was interrupted by Mrs. Reverdy.
"Where shall we put them, do you think, Mr. Masters? I'm quite anxious. Here, on the verandah, do you think?—or on the green, where we mean to have supper? or would it be better to go into the house?"
"As a general principle, Mrs. Reverdy, I object to houses. When you can, keep out of them. So I say. And there comes one of your guests. I will take my horse out of the road."
Mrs. Reverdy objected and protested and ran to summon a servant, but the minister had his way and led his horse off to the stable. While he was gone, the little old green waggon which brought Miss Barry came at a soft jog up the drive and stopped before the door. Mrs. Reverdy came flying out and then down the steps to help her alight.
"It's a long ways to your place, Mis' Reverdy; I declare, I'm kind o' stiff," said the old lady as she mounted to the piazza. There she stood still and surveyed the prospect. And her conclusion burst forth in an unequivocal, "Ain't it elegant!"
"I am delighted you like it," said Mrs. Reverdy with her running laugh."Won't you sit down?"
"I hain't got straightened out yet, after drivin' the horse so long. It does put me in a kind o' cramp, somehow, to drive,—'most allays."
"Is the horse so hard-mouthed?"
"La! bless you, I never felt of his mouth. He don't do nothin'; I don't expect he would do nothin'; but I allays think he's a horse, and there's no tellin'."
"That's very true," said Mrs. Reverdy, the laugh of condescending acquiescence mingled with a little sense of fun now. "But do sit down; you'll be tired standing."
"There's Mrs. Flandin's waggin, I guess, comin'; she was 'most ready when I come by. Is this your sister?"—looking at Gertrude.
"No, the other is my sister. This is Miss Masters; a cousin of your minister."
"I thought she was, maybe,—your sister, I mean,—because she had her hair the same way. Ain't it very uncomfortable?" This to Gertrude.
"It is very comfortable," said the young lady; "except in hot weather."
"Don't say it is!" quoth Miss Barry, looking at the astonishing hair while she got out her needles. "Seems to me I should feel as if my hair never was combed."
"Not if itwascombed, would you?" said Gertrude gravely.
"Well, yes; seems to me I should. I allays liked to have my hair sleeked up as tight as I could get it; and then I knowed there warn't none of it flyin'. But la! it's a long time since I was young, and there's new fashions. Is the minister your cousin?"
"Yes. How do you like him?"
"I hain't got accustomed to him yet," said the little old lady, clicking her needles with a considerate air. "He ain't like Mr. Hardenburgh, you see; and Mr. Hardenburgh was the minister afore him."
"What was the difference?"
"Well—Mr. Hardenburgh, you could tell he was a minister as fur as you could see him; he had that look. Now Mr. Masters hain't; he's just like other folks; only he's more pleasant than most."
"Oh, he is more pleasant, is he?"
"Well, seems to me he is," said the little old lady. "It allays makes me feel kind o' good when he comes alongside. He's cheerful. Mr. Hardenburghwasa good man, but he made me afeard of him; he was sort o' fierce, in the pulpit and out o' the pulpit. Mr. Masters ain't nary one."
"Do you think he's a good preacher, then?" said Gertrude demurely, bending over to look at Miss Barry's knitting.
"Well, I do!" said the old lady. "There! I ain't no judge; but I love to sit and hear him. 'Tain't a bit like a minister, nother, though it's in church; he just speaks like as I am speakin' to you; but he makes the Bible kind o' interestin'."
It was very well for Gertrude that Mrs. Carpenter now came to take her seat on the piazza, and the conversation changed. She had got about as much as she could bear. And after Mrs. Carpenter came a crowd; Mrs. Flandin, and Mrs. Mansfield, and Miss Gunn, and all the rest, with short interval, driving up and unloading and joining the circle on the piazza; which grew a very wide circle indeed, and at last broke up into divisions. Gertrude was obliged to suspend operations for a while, and use her eyes instead of her tongue. Most of the rest were inclined to do the same; and curious glances went about in every direction, not missing Miss Masters herself. Some people were absolutely tongue-tied; others used their opportunity.
"Don't the wind come drefful cold over them flats in winter?" asked one good lady who had never been at Elmfield before. Mrs. Reverdy's running little laugh was ready with her answer.
"I believe it does; but we are never here in winter. It's too cold."
"Your gran'ther's here, ain't he?" queried Mrs. Salter.
"Yes, O yes; grandpa is here, of course. I don't suppose anything would draw him away from the old place."
"How big is the farm?" went on the first speaker.
Mrs. Reverdy did not know; three or four hundred acres, she believed.Or it might be five. She did not know the difference!
"I guess your father misses you when you all go away," remarked Mrs.Flandin, who had hardly spoken, at least aloud.
The reply was prevented, for Mrs. Starling's waggon drew up at the foot of the steps, and Mrs. Reverdy hastened down to give her assistance to the ladies in alighting. Gertrude also suspended what she was saying, and gave her undivided attention to the view of Diana.
She was only a country girl, Miss Masters said to herself. Yet what a lovely figure, as she stood there before the waggon; perfectly proportioned, light and firm in action or attitude, with the grace of absolute health and strength and faultless make. More; there always is more to it; and Gertrude felt that without in the least having power to reason about it; felt in the quiet pose and soft motion those spirit indications of calm and strength and gracious dignity, which belonged to the fair proportions and wholesome soundness of the inward character. The face said the same thing when it was turned, and Diana came up the steps; though it was seen under a white sun-bonnet only; the straight brows, the large quiet eyes, the soft creamy colour of the skin, all testified to the fine physical and mental conditions of this creature. And Gertrude felt as she looked that it would not have been very surprising if Evan Knowlton or any other young officer had lost his heart to her. But she isn't dressed, thought Gertrude; and the next moment a shadow crossed her heart as Diana's sun-bonnet came off, and a wealth of dark hair was revealed, knotted into a crown of nature's devising, which art could never outdo. "I'll find out about Evan," said Miss Masters to herself.
She had to wait. The company was large now, and the buzz of tongues considerable; though nothing like what had been in Mrs. Starling's parlour. So soon as the two new-comers were fairly seated and at work, Mrs. Flandin took up the broken thread of her discourse.
"Ain't your father kind o' lonesome here in the winters, all by himself?"
"My grandfather, you mean?" said Mrs. Reverdy,
"I mean your grandfather. I forget you ain't his own; but it makes no difference. Don't he want you to hum all the year round?"
"I daresay he would like it."
"He's gettin' on in years now. How old is Squire Bowdoin?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Reverdy. "He's between seventy and eighty, somewhere."
"You won't have him long with you."
"O, I hope so!" said Mrs. Reverdy lightly, and with the unfailing laugh which went with everything; "I think grandpa is stronger than I am. I shouldn't wonder if he'd outliveme."
"Still, don't you think it is your duty to stay with him?"
Mrs. Reverdy laughed again. "I suppose we don't always do our duty," she said. "It's too cold here in the winter—after October or September—for me."
"Then it is not your duty to be here," said her sister Euphemia, somewhat distinctly. But Mrs. Flandin was bound to "free her mind" of what was upon it.
"I should think the Squire'd want Evan to hum," she went on.
"It would be very nice if Evan could be in two places at once," Mrs.Reverdy owned conciliatingly.
"WhereisCaptain Knowlton now?" asked Mrs. Boddington.
"O, he is not a captain yet," said Mrs. Reverdy. "He is only a lieutenant. I don't know when he'll get any higher than that. He's a great way off—on the frontier—watching the Indians."
"I should think it was pleasanter work to watch sheep," said Mrs.Flandin "Don't it make you feel bad to have him away so fur?"
"O, we're accustomed to having him away, you know; Evan has never been at home; we really don't know him as well as strangers do. We have just got a letter from him at his new post."
They had got a letter from him! Two bounds Diana's heart made: the first with a pang of pain that they should have the earliest word; the next with a pang of joy, at the certainty that hers must be lying in the post office for her. The blood flowed and ebbed in her veins with the violent action of extreme excitement. Yet nature did for this girl what only the practice and training of society do for others; she gave no outward sign. Her head was not lifted from her work; the colour of her cheek did not change; and when a moment after she found Miss Masters at her side, and heard her speaking, Diana looked and answered with the utmost seeming composure.
"I've been trying ever since you came to get round to you," Gertrude whispered. "I'm so glad to see you again."
But here Mrs. Flandin broke in. She was seated near.
"Ain't your hair a great trouble to you?"
Gertrude gave it a little toss and looked up.
"How do you get it all flying like that?"
"Everybody's hair is a trouble," said Gertrude. "This is as little as any."
"Do you sleep with it all round your shoulders? I should think you'd be in a net by morning."
"I suppose you would," said Gertrude.
"Is that the fashion now?"
"It is one fashion," Miss Masters responded.
"If it warn't, I reckon you'd do it up pretty quick. Dear me! what a thing it is to be in the fashion, I do suppose."
"Don't you like it yourself, ma'am?" queried Gertrude.
"Never try.I'vesomething else to do in life."
"Well, but there's noharmin being in the fashion, Mis' Flandin," said Miss Gunn. "The minister said he thought there warn't."
"The minister had better take care of himself," Mrs. Flandin retorted.
Whereupon they all opened upon her. And it could be seen that for the few months during which he had been among them, the minister had made swift progress in the regards of the people. Scarce a tongue now but spoke in his praise or his justification, or called Mrs. Flandin to account for her hasty remark.
"When you're all done, I'll speak," said that lady coolly. "I'm not a man-worshipper—never was; and nobody's fit to be worshipped.Ishould like to see the dominie put down that grey horse of his."
"Are grey horses fashionable?" inquired Mrs. Reverdy, with her little laugh.
"What would he do without his horse?" said Mrs. Boddington. "How could he fly round Pleasant Valley as he does?"
"He ain't bound to fly," said Mrs. Flandin.
"How's he to get round to folks, then?" said Mrs. Salter. "The houses are pretty scattering in these parts; he'd be a spry man if he could walk it."
"Seems to me, that 'ere grey hoss is real handy," said quiet Miss Barry, who never contradicted anybody. "When Meliny was sick, Mr. Masters'd be there, to our house, early in the mornin' and late at night; and he allays had comfort with him. There! I got to set as much by the sight o' that grey hoss, you wouldn't think; just to hear him come gallopin' down the road did me good."
"Yes; and so it was to our house, when Liz was overturned," said Mary Delamater. "He'd be there every day, just as punctual as could be; and he could never have walked over. It's a cruel piece of road between our house and his'n."
"I don't want him to walk," said Mrs. Flandin; "there's more ways than one o' doin' most things; but Idosay, all the ministers ever I see druv a team; and it looks more religious. To see the minister flyin' over the hills like a racer is altogether too gay for my likin's."
"But he ain't gay," said Miss Gunn, looking appalled.
"He's mighty spry, for anybody that gets up into a pulpit on theSabbath and tells his fellow-creaturs what they ought to be doin'."
"But he does do that, Mrs. Flandin," said Diana. "He speaks plain enough, too."
"Idolove to hear him!" said Miss Barry. "There, his words seem to go all through me, and clear up my want of understandin'; for I never was smart, you know; but seems to me I see things as well agin when he's been talkin' to me. I say, it was a good day when he come to Pleasant Valley."
"He ain't what you call an eloquent man," said Miss Babbage, the schoolmaster's sister.
"What is an 'eloquent man,' Lottie Babbage?" Mrs. Boddington asked. "It's a word, I know; but what is the thing the word means? Come, you ought to be good at definitions."
"Mr. Masters don't pretend to be an eloquent man!" cried Mrs. Carpenter.
"Well, tell; come! what do you mean by it? I'd like to know," said Mrs. Boddington. "I admire to get my idees straight. What is it he don't pretend to be?"
"I don't think he pretends to be anything," said Diana.
"Only to have his own way wherever he goes," added Diana's mother.
"I'd be content to let him have his own way," said Mrs. Carpenter. "It's pretty sure to be a good way; that's whatIthink. I wisht he had it, for my part."
"And yet he isn't eloquent?" said Mrs. Boddington.
"Well," said Miss Babbage with some difficulty, "he just says what he has got to say, and takes the handiest words he can find; but I've heard men that eloquent that they'd keep you wonderin' at 'em from the beginning of their sermon to the end; and you'd got to be smart to know what they were sayin'. A child can tell what Mr. Masters means."
"So kin I," said Miss Barry. "I'm thankful I kin. And I don't want a man more eloquent than he is, for my preachin'."
"It ain't movin' preachin'," said Mrs. Flandin.
"It moves the folks," said Mrs. Carpenter. "I don't know what you'd hev', Mis' Flandin; there's Liz Delamater, and Florry Mason, jined the church lately; and old Lupton; and my Jim," she added with softened voice; "and there's several more serious."
No more could be said, for the minister himself came upon the scene at this instant. There was not an eye that did not brighten at the sight of him, with the exception of Mrs. Starling and Diana; there was not a lady there who was not manifestly glad to have him come near and speak to her; even Mrs. Flandin herself, beside whom the minister presently sat down and entered into conversation respecting some new movement in parish matters, for which he wished to enlist her help. General conversation returned to its usual channels.
"I can't stand this," whispered Gertrude to Diana; "I am tired to death. Do come down and walk over to the river with me. Do! you can work another day."
Diana hesitated; glanced around her. It was manifest that this was an exceptional meeting of the society, and not for the purposes of work chiefly. Here and there needles were suspended in lingering fingers, while their owners made subdued comments to each other or used their eyes for purposes of information getting. One or two had even left work, and were going to the back of the house, through the hall, to see the garden. Diana not very unwillingly dropped her sewing, and followed her conductor down the steps and over the meadow.
"The sun isn't hot, through all this cloud," said Gertrude, "so I don't mind it. We'll get into the shade under the elm yonder."
"There is no cloud," said Diana.
"No cloud? What is it then?Somethinghas come over the sun."
"No, it's haze."
"What is haze?"
"I don't know. We have it in Indian summer, and sometimes in October, like this."
"Isn't it hot?" said Gertrude; "and last week we were having big fires.It's such queer weather. Now this shade is nice."
Under one or two of the elm canopies along the verge of the little river some rustic seats had been fixed. Gertrude sat down. Diana stood, looking about her. The dreamy beauty through which she had ridden that afternoon was all round her still; and the meadow and the scattered elms, with the distant softly-rounded hills, were one of New England's combinations, in which the gentlest beauty and the most characteristic strength meet and mingle. But what was more yet to Diana, she was among Evan's haunts. Herehewas at home. There seemed to her fancy to be a consciousness of him in the silent trees and river; as if they would say if they could,—as if they were saying mutely,—"We know him—we know him; and we are old friends of his. We could tell you a great deal about him."
"Elmfield is a pretty place," said Gertrude. She had been eyeing her companion while Diana was receiving the confidences of the trees.
"Lovely!"
"If it didn't grow so cold in winter," said the young lady, shrugging her airy shoulders.
"I like the cold."
"I should like to have it always hot enough to wear muslin dresses.Come, sit down. Evan put these seats here."
But Diana continued standing.
"Did you hear that woman scolding because he don't stay here and give up his army life?"
"She takes her own view of it," said Diana.
"Doyouthink he ought to give up everything to take care of his grandfather?"
"I daresay his grandfather likes to have him do as he is doing."
"But it must be awfully hard, mustn't it, for them to have him so far away, and fighting the Indians?"
"Is he fighting the Indians?" Diana asked quietly; though she made the words quiet, she knew, by sheer force of necessity. But quiet they were; slow, and showing no eagerness; while her pulse had made one mad jump, and then seemed to stand still.
"O, the Indians are always making trouble, you know, on the frontier;that's what our men are there for, to watch them. I didn't mean thatEvan was fighting just at this minute; but he might be, any minute.Shouldn't you feel bad if he was your brother?"
"Mrs. Reverdy doesn't seem to be uneasy."
"She? no," said Gertrude with a laugh; "nothing makesheruneasy.Except thinking that Evan has fallen in love with somebody."
"She must expect that sooner or later," said Diana, with a calmness which told her companion nothing.
"Ah, but she would rather have it later. She don't want to lose Evan.She is very proud of him."
"Would she lose him in such a case?" Diana asked, smiling, though she wished the talk ended.
"Why, you know brothers are good for nothing to sisters after they are married—worse! they are tantalizing. You are obliged to see what you used to have in somebody else's possession—and much more than ever you used to have; and it's tiresome. I'm glad I've no brothers. Basil is a good deal like a brother, and I am jealous ofhim."
"It must be very uncomfortable to be jealous," said Diana,
"Horrid! You saw a good deal of Evan, didn't you?"
A question that might have embarrassed Diana if she had not had an instant perception of the intent of it. She answered thereupon with absolute self-possession,
"I don't know what you would call a 'good deal.' I saw whatIcall a good deal of him that day in the blackberry field."
"Don't you think he is charming?"
Diana laughed, and was vexed to feel her cheeks grow warm.
"That's a word that belongs to women."
"Not to many of 'em!" said Gertrude, with a slight turning up of her pretty nose. Then, struck with the fine, pure face and very lovely figure before her, she suddenly added, "Didn't he think you charming?"
"Are you laughing at me?" said Diana.
"No, indeed I am not. Didn't he?" said Gertrude caressingly.
Amusement almost carried off the temptation to be provoked. Diana laughed merrily as she answered, "Do you think a person of so good taste would?"
"Yes, I do," said Gertrude, half sulkily, for she was baffled, and besides, her words spoke the truth. "I am sure he did. Isn't life very stupid up here in the mountains, when visitors are all gone away?"
"I don't think so. We never depend upon visitors."
"It has been awfully slow at Elmfield since Mr. Knowlton went away. We sha'n't stay much longer. I can't live where I can't dance."
"What is that?" said a voice close at hand—a peculiarly clear, silvery voice.
"Cousin Basil!" cried Gertrude, starting. "What did you come here for?I brought Miss Starling here to have a good talk with her."
"Have you had it?"
"I haven't had time. I was just beginning."
"What! about dancing?"
"I was not speaking for you to hear. I was relieving myself by the confession that I can't live—happily, I mean—without it."
"Choice of partners immaterial?"
"I couldn't bear a dull life!"
"Nor I."
He looked as if he certainly did not know what dulness was, Diana thought. She listened, much amused.
"But you think it is wrong to dance, don't you?" Gertrude went on.
"'Better not' is wrong to a Christian," he replied.
"It must be dreadful to be a Christian!"
"Because—?" he said, with a quiet and good-humoured glance and tone of inquiry.
"O, because it is slavery. So many things you cannot do, and dresses you cannot wear."
"By what rule?" Mr. Masters asked.
"O, people think you are dreadful if you do those things; the Church, and all that. So I think it is a great deal better to keep out of it, and make no pretensions."
"Better to keep out of what? let me understand," said the minister."You are getting my ideas in a very involved state."
"No, I am not! I say, it is better to make no profession."
"Better than what? What is the alternative?"
"O, you know. Now you are catechizing me. It is better to make no profession, than to make it and not live up to it."
"I understand. That is to say, it is wicked to pay your debts with counterfeit notes, so it is better not to pay them at all."
"Nonsense, Basil! I am not talking of paying debts."
"But I am."
"What have debts got to do with it?"
"I beg your pardon. I understood you to declare your disapprobation of false money, and your preference for another sort of dishonesty."
"Dishonest, Basil! there is no dishonesty."
"By what name do you call it?"
He was speaking gravely, though with a surface pleasantry; both gravity and pleasantry were of a very winning kind. Diana looked on and listened, much interested, as well as amused; Gertrude puzzled and impatient, though unable to resist the attraction. She hesitated, and surveyed him.
"There can't be dishonesty unless where one owes something."
"Precisely"—he said, glancing at her. His hands were busy at the time with a supple twig he had cut from one of the trees, which he was trimming of its leaves and buds.
"What do I owe?" said the beauty, throwing her tresses of hair off from her shoulders.
He waited a bit, the one lady looking defiant, the other curious; and then he said, with a sort of gentle simplicity that was at the same time uncompromising,
"'The Lord hath made all things for himself.'"
Gertrude's foot patted the turf; after a minute she answered,
"Of course you say that because you are a clergyman."
"No, I don't. I am stating a fact, which I thought it likely you had forgotten."
Gertrude stood up, as if she had got enough of the conversation. Diana wished for another word.
"It is a fact," she said; "but what have we to do with it?"
"Only to let the Lord have his own," said the minister with a full look at her.
"How do you mean, Mr. Masters? I don't understand."
Gertrude was marching over the grass, leading to the house. The other two followed.
"When you have contrived and made a thing, you reckon it is your own, don't you? and when you have bought something, you think it is at your disposal?"
"Certainly; but"—
"'Youwere bought with a price.'"
"Of course, God has a right to dispose of us," Diana assented in an "of course" way.
"Doeshe?" said the minister. Then, seeing her puzzled expression, he went on—"He cannot dispose of you as he wishes, without your consent."
Diana stopped short, midway in the meadow. "I do not in the least understand, Mr. Masters," she said. "How does He wish to dispose of me?"
"When you are his own, he will let you know," said the minister, beginning to stroll onward again; and no more words passed till they were nearing the house, when he said suddenly, "Whom do you think you belong to now?"
Diana's thought made an instant leap at the words, a leap over hundreds of miles of intervening space, and alighted beside a fine officer-like figure in a dark blue military coat with straps on the shoulders. That was where she "belonged," she thought; and a soft rose colour mantled on her cheek, and deepened, half with happiness, halt with pride. The question that had provoked it was forgotten; and the neighbourhood of the house was now too near to allow of the inquiry being pressed or repeated. The minister, indeed, was aware that for some time he and his companion had been facing a battery; but Diana was in happy unconsciousness; it was the thought of nothing present or near which made her eyes droop and her cheeks take on such a bloom of loveliness.
Among the eyes that beheld, Mrs. Starling's had not been the least keen, though she watched without seeming to watch. She saw how the minister and her daughter came slowly over the meadow, engaged with each other's conversation, while Miss Masters tripped on before them. She noticed the pause in their walk, Diana's slow, thoughtful step; and then, as they came near, her flush and her downcast eye.
"The minister's talk's very interestin'," whispered Mrs. Carpenter in her ear.
"Not to me," said Mrs. Starling, wilfully misunderstanding. "Some folks thinks so, I know. I can't somehow never get along with him."
"And Diana sha'n't," was her inward resolve; "but she can't be thinkin' of the other feller."
As if to try the question, at the moment, Mrs. Reverdy appeared at the top of the steps, just as the minister and Diana got to the foot of them. She was in high glee, for her party was going off nicely, and the tables were just preparing for supper.
"We want nothing now but Evan," she said with her unfailing laugh. "Miss Starling, don't you think he might have come for this afternoon, just to see so many friends?"
Diana never knew where she got the coolness to answer, "How long a journey is it, Mrs. Reverdy?"
"O, I don't know! How far is it, Mr. Masters?—a thousand miles?—or two thousand? I declare I have no idea. But love laughs at distances, they say."
"Is Cupid a contractor on this road?" inquired the minister gravely.
"A contractor!" exclaimed Mrs. Reverdy, laughing, "oh, dear, what a funny idea! I never thought of putting it so. But I didn't know but Miss Starling could tell us."
"Do you know anything about it, Miss Diana?" asked the minister.
"About what?"
"Why Lieutenant Knowlton is not here this afternoon?"
Diana knew that several pairs of eyes were upon her. It was a dangerous minute. But she had failed to discern in Mrs. Reverdy or in Gertrude any symptom of more than curiosity; and curiosity she felt she could meet and baffle. It was impertinent, and it was unkind. So, though her mind was at a point which made it close steering, she managed to sheer off from embarrassment and look amused. She laughed in the eyes that were watching her, and answered carelessly enough to Mr. Masters' question that she "dared say Mr. Knowlton would have come if he could." Mrs. Starling put up her work with a sigh of relief; and the rest of the persons concerned felt free to dismiss the subject from their minds and pay attention to the supper.
It was a great success, Mrs. Reverdy's sewing party. The excellent entertainment provided was heartily enjoyed, all the more for the little stimulus of curiosity which hung about every article and each detail of the tea-table. Old Mr. Bowdoin delighted himself in hospitable attentions to his old neighbours, and was full of genial and gratified talk with them. The stiffness of the afternoon departed before the tea and coffee; and when at last the assembly broke up, and a little file of country waggons drove away, one after another, from the door, it was with highly gratified loads of people.
Diana may be quoted as a single exception. In the tremor of her spirits which followed the bit of social navigation noticed above, she had hardly known how anything tasted at the supper; and the talk she had heard without hearing. There was nothing but relief in getting away.
The drive home was as silent between her and her mother as the drive out had been. Mrs. Starling was full of her own cogitations. Diana's thoughts were not like that,—hard-twisted and hard-knotted lines of argument, growing harder and more twisted towards their end; but wide flowing and soft changing visions, flowing sweet and free as the clouds borne on the air-currents of heaven; catching such colours, and drifting as insensibly from one form into another. The evening kept up the dreamy character of the afternoon, the haze growing duskier as the light waned; till the tender gleam of a full moon began to supply here and there the glory of the lost sunlight. It was a colder gleam, though; and so far, more practical than that flush of living promise which a little while ago had filled the sky and the world. Diana's thoughts centred on Evan's letter. Where was it? When should she get it? Josiah, she knew, had been to the post office that morning, and brought home nothing! She wished she could go to the post office herself; she sometimes had done so; but she would not like to take Evan's letter, either, from the knowing hands of the postmaster. She might not be able to command her looks perfectly.
"They don't know how to make soda biscuit down yonder," Mrs. Starling broke out abruptly, just as their drive was near ended.
"Don't they?" said Diana absently.
"All yellow!" said Mrs. Starling disdainfully. "Nobody would ever know there was any salaratus inmybiscuit—or in yours either."
"Except from the lightness, mother."
"The lightness wouldn't tell what made 'em light," said Mrs. Starling logically. "They had salaratus in their pickles too."
"How could you tell?"
"Tell? As if I couldn't tell! Tell by the colour."
"Ours are green too."
"Not green like that. I would despise to make my pickles green that way. I'd as soon paint 'em."
"It was very handsome, mother, the supper altogether."
"Hm! It was a little too handsome," said Mrs. Starling, "and that was what they liked about it. I'd like to know what is the use o' having great clumsy forks of make-believe silver"—
"O, they were real, mother."
"Well, the more fools if they were. I'd like to know what is the use of having great clumsy forks of silver, real or make-believe, when you can have nice, sharp, handy steel ones, and for half or a quarter the price?"
Diana liked the silver forks, and was silent.
"I could hardly eat my pickles with 'em. I couldn't, if they had beenmine;but Genevieve's cucumbers were spongy."
To Diana's relief, their own door was gained at this moment. She did not know what her mother's discourse might end in, and was glad to have it stopped. Yet the drive had been pretty!
The men had had their supper, which had been left ready for them; and Josiah's care had kept up a blazing fire in the lean-to kitchen. Diana went up-stairs to change her dress, for she had the dishes now to wash up; and Mrs. Starling stood in front of the fire-place, pondering. She had been pondering all the time of the drive home, as well as much of the time spent at Elmfield; she believed she had come to a conclusion; and yet she delayed her purpose. It was clear, she said to herself, that Diana did not care for Lieut. Knowlton; at least not much; her fancy might have been stirred. But what is a girl's fancy? Nothing worth considering. Letters, if allowed, might nourish the fancy up into something else. She would destroy this first one. She had determined on that. Yet she lingered. Conscience spoke uneasily. What if she were misled by appearances, and Diana had more than a fancy for this young fellow? Then she would crush it! Nobody would be the wiser, and nobody would die of grief; those things were done in stories only. Mrs. Starling hesitated nevertheless, with her hand on the letter, till the sound of Diana's step in the house decided her action. She was afraid to wait; some accident might overthrow all her arrangements; and with a hasty movement she drew the packet from her bosom and tucked it under the fofestick, where a bed of glowing nutwood coals lay ready. Quick the fire caught the light tindery edges, made a little jet of excitement about the large wax seal, fought its way through the thick folds of paper, and in a moment had left only a mock sheet of cinder, with mock marks of writing still traceable vividly upon it. A letter still, manifestly, sharp-edged and square; it glowed at Mrs. Starling from its bed of coals, with the curious impassiveness of material things; as if the happiness of two lives had not shrivelled within it. Mrs. Starling stood looking. What had been written upon that fiery scroll? It was vain to ask now; and hearing Diana coming down-stairs, she took the tongs and punched the square cinder that kept its form too well. Little bits of paper, grey cinder with red edges, fluttered in the draught, and flew up in the smoke.
"What are you burning there, mother?" said Diana.
And Mrs. Starling answered a guilty "Nothing," and walked away. Diana looked at the little fluttering cinders, and an uneasy sensation came over her, that yet took no form of suspicion; and passed, for the thing was impossible. So near she came to it.
Why had Mrs. Starling not at least read the letter before destroying it? The answer lies in some of the strange, hidden involutions of feeling and consciousness, which are hard to trace out even by the person who knows them best. After the thing was done, she wished she had read it. It may be she feared to find what would stay her hand, or make her action difficult. It may be that certain stirrings of conscience warned her that delay might defeat her whole purpose. She was an obstinate woman, by nature; obstinate to the point of wilful blindness when necessary; and to do her justice, she was perfectly incapable of estimating the gain or the loss of such an affection as Diana's, or of sympathizing with the suffering such a nature may know. It was not in her; she had no key to it; grant the utmost mischief that she supposed it even possible she might be doing, and it was as a summer gale to the cyclone of the Indian seas.
So her conscience troubled her little, and that little was soon silenced. Perhaps not quite forgotten; for it had the effect, not to make her more than usual tender of her daughter and indulgent towards her, as one would expect, but stern, carping and exacting beyond all her wont. She drove household matters with a tighter rein than ever, and gave Diana as little time for private thought or musing as the constant and engrossing occupation of her hands could leave free. But, however, thoughts are not chained to fingers. Alas! what troubled calculations Diana worked into her butter, those weeks; and how many heavy possibilities she shook down from her fingers along with the drops of water she scattered upon the clothes for the ironing. Her very nights at last became filled with the anxious cogitations that never ceased all the day; and Diana awoke morning after morning unrefreshed and weary from her burdened sleep, and from dreams that reproduced in fantastic combinations the perplexities of her waking life. Her face began to grow shadowed and anxious, and her tongue was still. Mrs. Starling had generally done most of the talking; she did it all now.
Days passed on, and weeks. Mrs. Starling did not find out that anything was the matter with Diana; partly because she was determined that nothing should be the matter; and partly because young Flandin came about the house a good deal, and Mrs. Starling thought Diana to be vexed, or perhaps in a state of vexed indecision about him. And in addition, she was a little anxious herself, lest another letter should come and somehow reach the hands it was meant for. Having gone so far already, Mrs. Starling did not mean to spoil or lose her work for want of a few finishing touches. She watched the post office as never in her life, for any cause, she had watched it before.
Diana would have written to Mr. Knowlton to get her mystery solved; she was far too simple and true to stand upon needless punctilio; but she did not know how to address to him a letter. Evan himself had not known when he parted from her; the information came in that epistle that never reached her hands, that first letter. Names and directions had all perished in the flames, and for want of them Diana could do nothing. Meanwhile, what would Evan think? He would expect an answer, and a quick answer, to his letter; he was looking for it now, no doubt; wondering why it did not come, and disappointed, and fearing something wrong. That trouble, of fearing something wrong, Diana was spared; for she knew the family at Elmfield had heard, and all was well; but sometimes her other troublesome thoughts made her powerless hands come together with a clasp of wild pain. How long must she wait now? how long would Evan wait, before in desperation he wrote again? And where was her letter? for it had been written and sent; that she knew;—was it lost? was it stolen? Had somebody's curiosity prevailed so far, and was her precious secret town property by this time? Every day became harder to bear; every week made the suspense more intolerable. Mrs. Starling was far out in one of her suppositions. Will Flandin came a good deal about the house, it is true; but Diana hardly knew he was there. If she thought about it at all, she was half glad, because his presence might serve to mask her silence and abstraction. She was conscious of both, and the effort to cover the one and hide the other was very painful sometimes.
October glories were passed away, and November days grew shorter and shorter, colder and more dreary. It seemed now and then to Diana that summer had gone to a distance from which it would never revisit her. And after those days of constant communication with Evan, the blank cessation of it, the ignorance of all that had befallen or was befalling him, the want of a word of remembrance or affection, grew almost to a blank of despair.
It was late in the month.
"What waggon's that stopping?" exclaimed Mrs. Starling one afternoon. Mother and daughter were in the lean-to. Diana looked out, and saw with a pang of various feelings what waggon it was.
"Ain't that the Elmfield folks?"
"I think so."
"I know so. I thought Mrs. Reverdy and the rest had run away from the cold."
"Didn't you know Miss Masters had been sick?"
"How should I know it?"
"I heard so. I didn't know but you had heard it."
"I can't hear things without somebody tells me. Go along up-stairs,Diana, and put on something."
Diana obeyed, but she was very quick about it; she was nervously afraid lest while she was absent some word should be said that she would not have lost for the whole world. What had they come for, these people? Was the secret out, perhaps, and had they come to bring her a letter? Or to say why Evan had not written? Could he have been sick? A feverish whirlwind of thoughts rushed through Diana's head while she was fastening her dress; and she went down and came into the parlour with two beautiful spots of rose colour upon her cheeks. They were fever-spots. Diana had been pale of late; but she looked gloriously handsome as she entered the room. Bad for her. A common-looking woman might have heard news from Evan; the instant resolve in the hearts of the two ladies who had come to visit her was, that this girl should hear none.
They were, however, exceedingly gracious and agreeable. Mrs. Reverdy entered with flattering interest into all the matters of household and farm detail respecting which Mrs. Starling chose to be communicative; responded with details of her own. How it was impossible to get good butter made, unless you made it yourself. How servants were unsatisfactory, even in Pleasant Valley; and how delightful it was to be able to do without them, as Mrs. Starling did and Diana.
"I should like it of all things," said Mrs. Reverdy with her unfailing laugh; a little, well-bred, low murmur of a laugh. "It must be so delightful to have your biscuits always light and never tasting of soda; and your butter always as if it was made of cowslips; and your eggs always fresh. We never have fresh eggs," continued Mrs. Reverdy, shaking her head solemnly;—"never. I never dare to have them boiled."
"What becomes of them?" said a new voice; and Mr. Masters entered the field—in other words, the room. Diana's heart contracted with a pang; was this another hindrance in the way of her hearing what she wanted? But the rest of the ladies welcomed him.
"Charming!" said Mrs. Reverdy; "now you will go home with us."
"I don't see just on what you found your conclusion."
"O, you will have made your visit to Mrs. Starling, you know; and then you will have nothing else to do."
"There spoke a woman of business!" said the minister.
"Yes, why not?" said the lady. "I was just telling Mrs. Starling how I should delight to do as she does, without servants, and how pleasant I should find it; only, you know, I shouldn't know how to do anything if I tried." Mrs. Reverdy seemed to find the idea very entertaining.
"You wouldn't like to get up in the morning to make your biscuits," said Gertrude.
"O yes, I would! I needn't have breakfast very early, you know."
"The good butter wouldn't be on the table if you didn't," said Mrs.Starling.
"Wouldn't it? Why? Does it matter when butter is made, if it is only made right?"
"No; but the trouble is, it cannot be made right after the sun is an hour or two high."
"An hour or two!" Mrs. Reverdy uttered a little scream.
"Not at this time of year, mother," interposed Diana.
"Do you get up at these fearful times?" inquired Miss Masters languidly, turning her eyes full upon the latter speaker.
Diana scarce answered. Would all the minutes of their visit pass in these platitudes? could nothing else be talked of? The next instant she blessed Mr. Masters.
"Have you heard from the soldier lately?" he asked.
"O yes! we hear frequently," Mrs. Reverdy said.
"He likes his post?"
"I really don't know," said her sister, laughing; "a soldier can't choose, you know; I fancy they have some rough times out there; but they manage to get a good deal of fun too. Evan's last letter told of buffalo hunting, and said they had some very good society too. You wouldn't expect it, on the outskirts of everything; but the officers' families are very pleasant. There are young ladies, sometimes; and every one is made a great deal of."
"Where is Mr. Knowlton?" Diana asked. She had been working up her courage to dare the question; it was hazardous; she was afraid to trust her voice; but the daring of desperation was on her, and the words came out with sufficiently cool utterance. A keen observer might note a change in Mrs. Reverdy's look and tone.
"O, he's in one of those dreadful posts out on the frontier; too near the Indians; but I suppose if there weren't Indians there wouldn't be forts, and they wouldn't want officers or soldiers to be in them," she added, looking at Mr. Masters, as if she had found a happy final cause for the existence of the aborigines of the country.
"What is the name of the place?" Diana asked.
"I declare I've forgotten. Fort——,I can't think of any name butVancouver, and it isn't that. Gertrude, whatisthe name of thatplace? Do you know, I can't tell whether it is in Arizona orWisconsin!" And Mrs. Reverdy laughed at her geographical innocence.
Gertrude "didn't remember."
"He is not so far off as Vancouver, I think," said Mr. Masters.
"No,—O no, not so far as that; but he might just as well. When you get to a certain distance, it don't signify whether it is more or less; you can't get at people, and they can't get at you.Youhave seemed to be at that distance lately, Basil. What a dreadful name! How came you to be called such a name?"
"Be thankful it is no worse," said the minister gravely. "I might have been called Lactantius."
"Lactantius! Impossible. Was there ever a man named Lactantius?"
"Certainly."
"'Tain't any worse than Ichabod," remarked Mrs. Starling.
"Nothing can be worse than Ichabod," said Mr. Masters in the same dry way. "It means, 'The glory is departed.'"
"The Ichabods I knew, never had any glory to begin with," said Mrs.Starling.
But the minister laughed at this, and so gaily that it was infectious. Mrs. Starling joined in, without well knowing why; the lady visitors seemed to be very much amused. Diana tried to laugh, with lips that felt rigid as steel. The minister's eye came to hers too, she knew, to see how the fun went with her. And then the ladies rose, took a very flattering leave, and departed, carrying Mr. Masters off with them.
"I am coming to look at those books of yours soon," he said, as he shook hands with Diana. "May I?"
Diana made her answer as civil as she could, with those stiff lips; how she bade good-bye to the others she never knew. As her mother attended them to the garden gate, she went up the stairs to her room, feeling now it was the first time that the paincould not be borne. Seeing these people had brought Evan so near, and hearing them talk had put him at such an impossible distance. Diana pressed both hands on her heart, and stood looking out of her window at the departing carriage. What could she do? Nothing that she could think of, and to do nothing was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering action, yes, even the least hopeful, anything that would have been action, would have made the pain supportable; she could have drawn breath then, enough for life's purposes; now she was stifling. There was some mystery; there was something wrong; some mistake, or misapprehension, or malpractice;something, which if she could put her hand on, all would be right. And it was hidden from her; dark; it might be near or far, she could not touch it, for she could not find it. There was even no place for suspicion to take hold, unless the curiosity of the post office, or of some prying neighbour; she did not suspect Evan; and yet there was a great throb at her heart with the thought that in Evan's placeshewould never have let things rest. Nothing should have kept the silence so long unbroken; if the first letter got no answer, she would have written another. So would Diana have done now, without being in Evan's place, if only she had had his address. And that cruel woman to-day! did she know, or did she guess, anything? or was it another of the untoward circumstances attending the whole matter?
It came to her now, a thought of regret that she had not ventured the disagreeableness and told her mother long ago of her interest in Evan. Mrs. Starling could take measures that her daughter could not take. If she pleased, that is; and the doubt also recurred, whether she would please. It was by no means certain; and at any rate now, in her mortification and pain, Diana could not invite her mother into her counsels. She felt that as from her window she watched the receding waggon, and saw Mrs. Starling turn from the gate and walk in. Uncompromising, unsympathizing, even her gait and the set of her head and shoulders proclaimed her to be. Diana was alone with her trouble.
An hour afterwards she came down as usual, strained the milk, skimmed her cream, went through the whole little routine of the household evening; her hands were steady, her eye was true, her memory lost nothing. But she did not speak one word, unless, which was seldom, a word was spoken to her. So went on the next day, and the next. November's days were trailing along, December's would follow; there was no change from one to another; no variety. Less than ever before; for, with morbid sensitiveness, Diana shrank from visitors and visiting. Every contact gave her pain.
Meanwhile, where was Evan's second letter? On its way, and in the post office.
It was late in November; Diana was sitting at the door of the lean-to, where she had been sitting on that June day when our story began. She was alone this time, and her look and attitude were sadly at variance with that former time. The November day was not without a charm of its own which might even challenge comparison with the June glory; for it was Indian summer time, and the wonder of soft spiritual beauty which had settled down upon the landscape, brown and bare though that was, left no room to regret the full verdure and radiant sunlight of high summer. The indescribable loveliness of the haze and hush, the winning tender colouring that was through the air and wrapped round everything, softening, mellowing, harmonizing somehow even the most unsightly; hiding where it could not beautify, and beautifying where it could not hide, like Christian charity; gave a most exquisite lesson to the world, of how much more mighty is spirit than matter. Diana did not see it, as she had seen the June day; her arms were folded, lying one upon another in idle fashion; her face was grave and fixed, the eyes aimless and visionless, looking at nothing and seeing nothing; cheeks pale, and the mouth parted with pain and questioning, its delicious childlike curves just now all gone. So sitting, and so abstracted in her own thoughts, she never knew that anybody was near till the little gate opened, and then with a start she saw Mr. Masters coming up the walk. Diana rose and stood in the doorway; all traces of country-girl manners, if she had ever had any, had disappeared before the dignity of a great and engrossing trouble.
"Good evening!" she said quietly, as they shook hands. "Mother's gone out."
"Gone out, is she?" said Mr. Masters, but not with a tone of particular disappointment.
"Yes. I believe she has gone to the Corner—to the post office."
"The Corner is a good way off. And how do you do?"
Diana thought he looked at her a little meaningly. She answered in the customary form, that she was well.
"That says a great deal—or nothing at all," the minister remarked.
"What?" said Diana, not comprehending him.
"That form of words,—'I am well'."
"It is very apt to mean nothing at all," said Diana, "for people say it without thinking."
"As you did just now?"
"Perhaps—but Iamwell."
"Altogether?" said the minister. "Soul and mind and body?"
The word read dry enough; his manner, his tone, half gentle, half bold, with a curious inoffensive kind of boldness, took from them their dryness and gave them a certain sweet acceptableness that most persons knew who knew Mr. Masters. Diana never dreamed that he was intrusive, even though she recognised the fact that he was about his work. Nevertheless she waived the question.
"Can anybody say that he is wellso?" she asked.
"I hope he can. Do you know the old lady who is called Mother Bartlett?"
"O yes."
"Do you think she would hesitate about answering that question? or be mistaken in the answer?"
"But what do you mean by it exactly?" said Diana.
"Don't you know?"
"I suppose I do. I know what it means to be well in body. I have been well all my life."
"How would you characterize that happy condition?"
"Why," said Diana, unused to definitions of abstractions, but following Mr. Masters' lead as people always did, gentle or simple,—"I mean, or it means, sound, and comfortable, and fit for what one has to do."
"Excellent," said the minister. "I see you understand the subject.Cannot those things be true of soul and mind, as well as of body?"
"What is the difference between soul and mind?" said Diana.
"A clear departure!" said the minister, laughing; then gravely, "Do you read philosophy?"
"I don't know"—said Diana. "I read, or I used to read, a good many sorts of books. I haven't read much lately."
The minister gave her another keen look while she was attending to something else, and when he spoke again it was with a change of tone.
"I had a promise once that I should see those books."
"Any time," said Diana eagerly; "any time!" For it would be an easy way of entertaining him, or of getting rid of him. Either would do.
"I think I proposed a plan of exchange, which might be to the advantage of us both."
"To mine, I am sure," said Diana. "I don't know whether there can be anything you would care for among the books up-stairs; but if there should be— Would you like to go up and look at them?"
"I should,—if it would not give you too much trouble."
It would be no trouble just to run up-stairs and show him where they were; and this Diana did, leaving him to overhaul the stock at his leisure. She came down and went on with her work.
Diana's heart was too sound and her head too clear to allow her to be more than to a certain degree distressed at not hearing from Evan. She did not doubt him more than she doubted herself; and not doubting him, things must come out all right by and by. She was restive under the present pain; at times wild with the desire to find and remove the something, whatever it was, which had come between Evan and her; for this girl's was no calm, easy-going nature, but one with depths of passionate reserve and terrible possibilities of suffering or enjoying. She had been calm all her life until now, because these powers and susceptibilities had been in an absolute poise; an equilibrium that nothing had shaken. Now the depths were stirred, and at times she was in a storm of impatient pain; but there came revulsions of hope and quiet lulls, when the sun almost shone again under the clearance made by faith and hope. One of these revulsions came now, after she had set the minister to work upon her books. Perhaps it was simple reaction; perhaps it was something caught from the quiet sunshiny manner and spirit of her visitor; but at her work in the kitchen Diana grew quite calm-hearted. She fancied she had discerned somewhat of more than usual earnestness in the minister's observation of her, and she began to question whether her looks or behaviour had furnished occasion. Perhaps she had not been ready enough to talk; poor Diana knew it was often the case now; she resolved she would try to mend that when he came down. And there was, besides, a certain lurking impatience of the bearing of his words; they had probed a little too deep, and after the manner of some morbid conditions, the probing irritated her. So by and by, when Mr. Masters came down with a brown volume in his hand, and offered to borrow it if she would let him lend her another of different colour, Diana met him and answered quite like herself, and went on—