"Yes. Josh says – you see, I've bin down to mill to git some rye ground, and he was there; and what's more, he had the start of me, and I had to wait for him, or I wouldn't ha' stood there chatterin' while the sun was shinin' like it is to-day; that ain't my way. But Josh says she's goin' round groanin' at sun'thin' – and that ain't her way, nother. Mind you, it ain't when anybody's by; I warrant you, she don't give no sign then that anythin's botherin' her; Josh says it's when she's alone. I didn't ask him how he come to know so much, and so little; but I wisht I had," Joe finished his speech laughing.

Diana took her hat, kissed the old woman, and went out to her husband, who was waiting for her. And some miles of the drive were made in silence. Then as the old brown house came in sight, with the weeping elms over the gate, Diana asked her husband to stop for a minute or two. He reined up under the elm trees and helped Diana out, letting her, however, go in alone.

Diana was not often here, naturally; between her and her mother, who never in the best of times had stood near together or shared each other's deeper sympathies, a gulf had opened. Besides, the place was painful to Diana on other accounts. It was full of memories and associations; she always seemed to herself when there as a dead person might on revisiting the place where once he had lived; she felt dead to all but pain, and the impression came back with sharp torture that once she used to be alive. So as the shadow of the elm branches fell over her now, it hurt her inexpressibly. She was alive when she had dwelt under them; yes, she and Evan too. She hurried her steps and went in at the lean-to door.

It was now long past mid-day. The noon meal was over, apparently, and every sign of it cleared away. The kitchen was in spotless order; but beside the table sat Mrs. Starling, doing nothing; an unheard-of state of affairs. Diana came farther in.

"Mother" —

"Well, Diana," – said Mrs. Starling, looking up. "What's brought you now?"

"I've been down to see Mrs. Bartlett – she sent for me – and I thought I would stop in as I went by. Mr. Masters is outside."

"Well, I've no objection," said Mrs. Starling ambiguously.

"How do you do?"

"Middling."

"Is all getting on well with the farm and the dairy?"

"I don't let it be no other way."

Diana saw that something was wrong, but knew also that if she were to find it out it would be by indirect ways.

"May I go into the pantry and get some milk? I've been a good while from home, and I'm hungry."

"Go along," said her mother ungraciously. "I should think likely, if

you are hungry, your baby is too. That's a new way of doing things.

'Twarn't ever my way. A woman that's got a baby ought to attend to it.

An' if she don't, her husband ought to make her."

"I've not been gone so long as all that comes to," said Diana; and she went into the pantry, her old domain. The pans of milk looked friendly at her; the sweet clean smell of cream carried her back – it seemed ages – to a time when she was as sweet and clean. "Yet it is not my fault," – she said to herself, – "it is her's– all her's." She snatched a piece of bread and a glass of milk, and swallowed it hastily. Then, as she came out, she saw that one of her mother's hands lay bandaged up in her lap under the table.

"Mother, what's the matter with your hand?"

"O, not much."

"But what? It's all tied up. Have you burned it?"

"No."

"What then? Cut yourself?"

"I should like to know how I should go to work to cut my right hand!

Don't make a fuss about nothing, Diana. It's only scalded."

"Scalded! How?"

"I shall never be able to tell that, to the end of my days," said Mrs. Starling. "If pots and kettles and that could be possessed, I should know what to think. I was makin' strawberry preserve – and the kettle was a'most full, and it was first rate preserve, and boiling, and almost done, and I had just set it down on the hearth; and then, I don't know how to this day, I stumbled – I don't know over what – and my arm soused right in."

"Boiling sweetmeat!" cried Diana. "Mother, let me see. It must be dreadfully burned."

"It's all done up," said Mrs. Starling coldly. "I was real put out about my preserves."

"Have you had dinner?"

"I never found I could live 'thout eating."

"Who got dinner for you, and cleared away?"

"Nobody. I did it myself."

"For the men and all!"

"Well, they don't count to live without eatin', no mor'n I do," said

Mrs. Starling with a short laugh.

"And you did it with one hand!"

"Did you ever know me to stop in anything I had to do, for want of a hand?" said Mrs. Starling scornfully.

No, thought Diana to herself; nor for want of anything else, even though it were right or conscience. Aloud she only said,

"I must go home to baby" —

"You had better, I should think," her mother broke in.

"Can I do anything for you first?"

"You can see for yourself, there is nothing to do."

"Shall I come back and stay with you to-night?"

"You had better ask the Dominie."

"Mother, he never wants me to do anything but just what is right," Diana said seriously. Mrs. Starling lifted up her head and gave a curious searching look into her daughter's face. What was she trying to find?

"That's one turtle dove," she said. "And are you another, and always bob your head when he bobs his'n?"

Diana wondered at this speech; it seemed to her, her mother was losing ground even in the matter of language. No thought of irritation crossed her; she was beyond trifles now. She made no answer; she merely bade her mother good-bye, and hurried out. And for a long while the drive was again in silence. Then, when the grey horse was walking up a hill, Diana spoke in a meditative sort of way.

"Basil – you said enjoyment was not the end of life" —

"Did I?" he answered gravely.

"If you didn't, it was Mother Bartlett. You do say so, I suppose?"

"Yes. It is not the end of life."

"What is, then?"

"To do the will of God. And by and by, if not sooner, enjoyment comes that way too, Diana. And when it comes that way, it stays, and lasts."

"How long?"

"For ever and ever!"

Diana waited a few minutes and then spoke again.

"Basil – I want to consult you."

"Well, do it."

"Ought I to leave my mother to live alone, as she is? She is not young now."

"What would you do?"

"If I knew, Basil, I would like it to do what I ought to do."

"Would you take her to live with you?"

"If you would? – and she would."

Basil put his arm round his wife and bent down and kissed her. He would not have done it if he could have guessed how she shrank.

"If you will take life on those terms," he said, "then it will be true for you, that 'sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'"

It will be the morning of the resurrection, then, thought Diana; but she only replied,

"What 'terms,' Basil, do you mean?"

"Doing the Lord's will. His will is always good, Diana, and brings sweet fruit; only you must wait till the fruit is ripe, my child."

"Then what about mother?"

"I do not believe she would come to us."

"Nor I. Suppose she would let us come to her?"

"Then I would go, – if you wished it."

"I don't wish it, Basil. I was thinking, if I could bear it? But the thought will not out of my head, that she ought not to be alone."

"Then do what is in thine heart," the minister said cheerfully.

CHAPTER XXXI.
A JUNE DAY

Mrs. Starling hesitated, when Diana proposed her plan; she would think of it, she said. But when she began to think of it, the attractions were found irresistible. To have her grandchild in the house beside her, perhaps with a vague thought of making up to her daughter in some unexplained way for the wrong she had done; at any rate, to have voices and life in the house again, instead of the bare silence; voices of people that belonged to her own blood; Mrs. Starling found that she could not give up the idea, once it got into her head. Then she objected that the house was too small.

The minister said he would put up an addition of a couple of rooms for himself and Diana, and Diana's old room could serve as a nursery.

Who wants a nursery? Mrs. Starling demanded. Her idea of a nursery was the whole house and all out of doors. The minister laughed and said that was not his idea; and Mrs. Starling was fain to let it pass. She was human, though she was not a good woman; and Diana's proposal to come back to her had, though she would never allow it even to herself, touched both her heart and her conscience. Somewhere very deep down and out of sight, nevertheless it was true; and it was true that she had been very lonely; and she let the minister have his own way, undisputed, about the building.

The carpenters were set to work at once, and at home Diana quietly made preparations for a removal in the course of a few months. She buried herself in business as much as ever she could, to still thought and keep her nerves quiet; for constantly, daily and nightly now, the image of Evan was before her, and the possibility that he might any day present himself in very flesh and blood. No precautions were of any avail; if he chose to seek her out, Diana could not escape him unless by leaving Pleasant Valley; and that was not possible. Would he come? She looked at that question from every possible point of the compass, and from every one the view that presented itself was that he would come. Nay, he ought not; it would be worse than of no use for them to see each other; and yet, something in Diana's recollections of him, or, it might be, something in the consciousness of her own nature, made her say to herself that he would come. How should she bear it? She almost wished that Basil would forbid it, and take measures to make it impossible; but the minister went his way unmoved and quiet as usual; there was neither fear nor doubt on his broad fair brow. Diana respected him immensely; and at times felt a great pang of grief that his face should wear such a shade of gravity as was habitual to it now. Knowing him so well as she did by this time, she could guess that though the gravity never degenerated into gloom, the reason was to be found solely and alone in the fact that Basil's inner life was fed by springs which were beyond the reach of earthly impoverishing or disturbing. How much better she thought him than herself! – as she looked at the calm, stedfast beauty of his countenance, which matched his daily life and walk. No private sorrow touched that. Never thinking of himself nor seeking his own, he was busy from morning till night with the needs of others; going from house to house, carrying help, showing light, bringing comfort, guiding into the way, pointing out the wrong; and at home, – Diana knew with what glad resort he went to his Bible and prayer for his own help and wisdom, and wrought out the lessons that were to be given openly in the little hillside church. Diana knew, too, what flowers of blessings were springing up along his path; what fruits of good. "The angel of the church" in Pleasant Valley he was, in a sense most true and lovely, although that be not the original bearing of the phrase in the Revelation, where Alford thinks, and I think, no human angels are intended. Nevertheless, that was Basil here; and his wife, who did not love him, honoured him to the bottom of her heart.

And in her self-reproach and her humility, Diana wrote bitterer things against herself than there was any need. For she, too, was doing her daily work with a lovely truth of aim and simpleness of purpose. With all the joys of life crushed out, she was walking the way which had become so weary with a steady foot, and with hands ready and diligent to do all they found to do. In another sort from her husband, the fair, calm, grave woman was the angel of her household. I can never tell you how beautiful Diana was now. If the careless light glance of the girl was gone, there was now, instead, the deeper beauty of a nature that has loved and suffered; that ripening process of humanity, without which it never comes to its full bloom and fruitage; though that be a very material image for the matter in hand. And there was besides in Diana the dignity of bearing of one who is lifted above all small considerations of every kind; that is, not above small duties, but above petty interests. Therefore, in this woman, who had never seen and scarcely imagined courts, even in the minister's house in Pleasant Valley, there was the calm poise and grace which we associate in our speech and thoughts with the highest advantages of social relations. So extremes sometimes meet. In Diana it was due to her inborn nobility of nature and the sharp discipline of sorrow; in aid of which practically came also her perfection of physical health and form. It must be remembered, too, that she had been now for a good while in the close companionship of a man of great refinement and culture, and that both study and conversation had lifted her by this time far out of the intellectual sphere in which the beginning of our story found her.

The carpenters were going on vigorously with their work on the new rooms adding to Mrs. Starling's house; and Diana was making, as she could from time to time, her little preparations for the removal, which, however, could not take place yet for some time. It was in the beginning of July. Diana was up-stairs one day, looking over the contents of a trunk, and cutting up pieces for patchwork. Windows were open, of course, and the scent of new hay came in with the warm air. Haymaking was going on all over Pleasant Valley. By and by Miss Collins put her head in.

"Be you fixed to see folks?"

"Who wants me?"

"Well, there's somebody comin'; and I reckon it's one or other o' them fly-aways from Elmfield."

"Here?" said Diana, starting up and trembling.

"Wall, there's one of 'em comin', I guess – I see the carriage – and I thought maybe you warn't ready to see no one. When one gets into a trunk it's hard to get out again. So I thought I'd jes' come and tell ye. There she is comin' up the walk. Hurry, now."

Down went Miss Collins to let the visitor in, and Diana did hurry and changed her dress. What can she be come for? she questioned with herself meanwhile; for it was Mrs. Reverdy, she had seen. No good! no good! But nobody would have guessed that Diana had ever been in a hurry, that saw her entrance the next minute upon her visitor. That little lady felt a sort of imposing effect, and did not quite know how to do what she had come for.

"I always think there has come some witchery over my eyes," she said with her invariable little laugh of ingratiation, "when I see you. I always feel a kind of new surprise. Is it the minister that has changed you so? What's he done?"

"Changed me?" Diana repeated.

"Why, yes; you are changed. You are not like what you were two years ago – three years ago – how long is it."

"It is three years ago," said Diana, trying to smile. "I am three years older."

"O, it isn't that. I'm three years older. I suppose I didn't see enough of you then to find you out. It was my fault. But if you had married somebody belonging to me, I can tell you, I should have been very proud of my sister-in-law."

She laughed at the compliment she was making, laughed lightly; while Diana inwardly shook, like a person who has received a sudden sharp blow, and staggers in danger of losing his footing. Did she waver visibly before her adversary's eyes, she wondered? She was sure her colour did not change. She found nothing to say, in any case; and after a moment her vision cleared and she had possession of herself again.

"I am saucy," said Mrs. Reverdy, smiling, "but nobody thinks of minding anything I say. That's the good of being little and insignificant, as I am."

Diana was inclined to wish her visitor would not presume upon her harmlessness.

"I should as soon think of being rude to a duchess," Mrs. Reverdy went on; "or to a princess. I don't see how Evan ever made up his mind to go away and leave you."

"Is it worse to be rude to a duchess than to other people?" Diana asked, seizing the first part of this speech as a means to get over the last.

"I never tried," said Mrs. Reverdy; "I never had the opportunity, you know. I might have danced with the Prince of Wales, perhaps, when he was here. I know a lady who did, and she said she wasn't afraid of him. If you had been there, I am sure she would not have got the chance."

"You forget, I am not a dancer."

"O, not now, of course – but then you wouldn't have been a minister's wife."

"Why should not a minister's wife dance as well as other people?"

"O, I don't know!" said Mrs. Reverdy lightly; "but they never do, you know. They are obliged to set an example."

"Of what?"

"Of everything that is proper, I suppose. Don't you feel that everybody's eyes are upon you, always, watching everything you do?"

A good reminder! But Diana answered simply that she never thought about it.

"Don't you! Isn't the minister always reminding you of what people will think?"

"No. It isn't his way."

"Doesn't he? Why, without being a minister, that is what my husband used always to be doing to me. I was a little giddy, you know," said Mrs. Reverdy, laughing; "I was very young; and I used to have plenty of admonitions."

"I believe Mr. Masters thinks we should only care about God's eyes,"

Diana said quietly.

Mrs. Reverdy startled a little at that, and for a moment looked grave.

From Diana she had not expected this turn.

"I never think about anything!" she said then with a laugh, that looked as if it were meant to be one of childlike, ingenuousness. "Don't think me very bad. Everybody can't be good and discreet like you and Mr. Masters."

"Very few people are like Mr. Masters," Diana assented.

"We all know that. And in the daily beholding of his superiority, have you quite forgotten everything else? – your old lover and all?"

"Whom do you mean?" Diana asked, with a calm coldness at which she wondered herself.

"I mean Evan, to be sure. You know he was your old lover. He wants to see you. He has not forgotten you, at any rate. Have you entirely forgotten him? Poor fellow! he has had a hard time of it."

"I have not forgotten Mr. Knowlton at all," Diana said with difficulty, for it seemed to her that her throat was suddenly paralyzed.

"You have not forgotten him? I may tell him that? Do you know, he raves about you? – I wish you could hear him once. He is Captain Knowlton now, you must understand; he has got his advancement early; but one or two people died, and somebody else was removed out of his way; and so he stepped into his captaincy. Lucky fellow! he always has been lucky; except just in one thing; and he thinks that spoils all. May he come and see you, Diana? He has given me no peace until I would come and ask you, and he will never have any peace, that I can see, if you refuse him. Poor fellow! there he is out there all this time, champing the bit worse than the horses."

And the woman said it all with her little civil smile and laugh, as if she were talking about sugar plums!

"Is he here?" cried Diana.

"With the horses – waiting to know the success of my mission; and I have been afraid to ask you, for fear you should say no; and I cannot carry back such an answer to him. May I tell him to come in?"

"Why should not he come to see me, as well as any other friend?" said

Diana. But the quiver in her voice gave the answer to her own question.

"Of course!" said Mrs. Reverdy, rising with a satisfied face. "There is no reason in the world why he should not, if you have kindness enough left for him to let him come. Then I'll go out and tell him to come in; for the poor fellow is sitting on sword's points all this while." And laughing at her supposed happy professional allusion, the lady withdrew.

Diana flew up the stairs to her own room. She did not debate much the question whether she ought to see Evan; it came to her rather as a thing that she must do; there was no question in the case. However, perhaps the question only lay very deep down in her consciousness, for the justification presented itself, that to refuse to see him, would be to confess both to his sister and himself that there was danger in it. Diana never could confess that, whatever the fact. So, answering dumbly the doubt that was as wordless, without stopping a moment she caught up her sleeping baby out of its cradle, and drawing the cradle after her went into her husband's study. Basil was there, she knew, at work. He looked up as she came in. Diana drew the cradle near to him, and carefully laid the still sleeping, fair and fat little bundle from her arms down in it again; this was done gently and deliberately enough; no hurry and no perturbation. Then she stood upright.

"Basil, will you take care of her? He is come."

The minister looked up into his wife's face; he knew what she meant. And he felt as he looked at her, how far she was from him. There was no smile on Diana's lips, indeed; on the contrary, an intensity of feelings that were not pleasurable; and yet, and yet, he who has looked for the light of love in an eye and missed it long, knows it when he sees it, even though it be not for him. The four eyes met each other steadily.

"Shall I see him?" Diana asked.

Basil stretched out his hand to her. "I can trust you, Diana."

She put her cold hand in his for a minute and hurried away. Then, as she reached the other room, she heard in the hall below a step, the step she had not heard for years; and her heart made one spring back over the interval. In the urgency of action, Diana's colour had hardly changed until now; now she turned deadly white, and for one instant sank on her knees by her bedside with her heart full of a mute, unformed prayer for help. It was fearful to go on, but she must go on now; she must see Evan; he was there; questions were done; and as she went down-stairs, while her face was white, and pain almost confused her senses, there was a stir of keen joy at her heart – fierce, like that of a wild beast which has been robbed of its prey but has got it again. She tried for self-command, and as one mean towards it forced herself to go deliberately. No hasty steps should be heard on the stairs or in the floor. Even so, the way was short; a moment, and she had entered the room, and she and Evan were face to face once more.

Face to face, and yet, neither dared look at the other. He was standing, waiting for her; she came a few paces into the room and stood still opposite him; they did not touch each other's hands; they made no show of greeting. How should they? in each other's presence indeed they were, with but a small space of transparent air between, to the sense; and yet, a barrier mountains high, of impassible ice, to the mind's apprehension. You could have heard a pin drop in the room; the two stood there, a few yards apart, not even looking at each other, yet intensely conscious each all the while of the familiar outlines and traits so long unseen, so well known by heart. Breathing the air of the same room again, and nevertheless miles and miles apart; that was what they were feeling. The miles could not be bridged over; what use to try to bridge over the yards? Diana was growing whiter, if whiter could be; Evan's head sank lower. At last the man succumbed; sat down; buried his head in his hands, and groaned aloud. Diana stood like a statue, but looking at him now.

What is it in little things which has such power over us? As Diana stood there looking, it was little things which stabbed her as if each were a sharp sword. The set of Evan's shoulders, the waves of his hair, the very gold shoulder-straps on the well-remembered blue uniform undress; his cap which lay on her table, with its service symbols. Is it that the sameness of these material trifles seems to assert that nothing is changed, and so makes the change more incredible and dreadful? I cannot describe the woful pain which the sight of these things gave Diana. With them came the fresh remembrance of all the manly beauty and grace of Evan in which she had once sunned herself, and the contrast of her husband. Not that Basil's personal appearance was ever to be despised, any more than himself; his figure was good, and his face had a beauty of its own, possibly a higher kind of beauty; but it was not the type of a hero of romance; and Evan's, to Diana's fancy, was; and it had been her romance. She stood still, motionless, breathless. If anybody spoke, it must be he. But at last she trembled too much to stand, and she sat down too.

"How has it happened, Diana?" Evan asked without looking up.

"I don't know," – she said just above her breath.

"How could you do so?"

Well, it suited him well to reproach her! What matter? Things could not be more bitter than they were. She did not try to answer.

"You have ruined both our lives. Mine is ruined; I am ruined. I shall never be worth anything now. I don't care what becomes of me."

As she still did not answer, he looked up, and their eyes met. Once meeting, they could not quit each other. Diana's gaze was sad enough, but eager with the eagerness of long hunger. His was sharp with pain at first, keen with unreasonable anger; one of the mind's resorts from unbearable torment. Then as he looked it changed and grew soft; and finally, springing up, he went over to where she sat, dropped on his knees before her, and seizing her hands kissed them one after the other till tears began to mingle with the kisses. She was passive; she could not drive him off; she felt that she and he must have this one moment to bury their past in; it was only when her hands were growing wet with his tears that she roused herself to an effort.

"Evan – Evan – listen to me! You mustn't – remember, I am a man's wife."

"How could you?"

"I did not know what I was doing."

"Have you given up loving me?"

"What is the use of talking of it, Evan? I am another man's wife."

"But there are such things as divorces."

"Hush! Do not speak of such a thing."

"I must speak of it. Whom do you love? tell me that first."

"No one has a right to ask me such a question."

"I have a right," cried the young man; "for I have been deceived, cheated, robbed of my own; and I have a right to get back my own. Diana, speak! do you love me less than you used to do? Tell me that."

"I do not change, Evan."

"Then you have no business to be anybody's wife but mine. Nothing can hinder that, Diana."

"Stop! You are not to speak so. I will not hear it."

"You are mine, Diana."

"I was yours, Evan!" she said tenderly, bending her head over him till her lips touched his hair. "We have been parted, and it is over – over for this world. You must go your way, and I must go mine. And you must not say, I am ruined."

"Do not you say it?"

"I must not."

"It is the truth for me, if I do not have you with me."

"It is not the truth," she said with infinite tenderness in her manner. "Not ruined, Evan. We can go our way and do our work, even if we are not happy. That is another thing."

"Then you are not happy?" he said eagerly.

Diana did not reply.

"Why should we not be happy?" he went on passionately, looking up now into her face. "You are mine, Diana – you belonged to me first, you have been mine all along; only I have been robbed of you; – pure robbery; nothing else. And has not a man a right to his own, wherever and whenever he finds it? You had given yourself first to me. That is irrevocable."

"No" – she said with the same gentleness, in every tone of which lurked an unutterable sorrow; it would have broken her husband's heart to hear her; and yet she was quiet, so quiet that she awed the young officer a little. "No – I had promised to give myself to you; that is all."

"You gave me your heart, Di?"

She was silent, for at the moment she could not speak

"Di!" – he insisted.

"Yes."

"That is enough. That is all."

"It is not all. Since then I have" —

"How could you do it, Diana? how could you do it, after your heart was mine? while your heart was mine!"

"I was dead," she said in the same low, slow, impressive way. "I thought I was dead, – and that it did not matter any more what I did, one way or another. I thought I was dead; and when I found out that there was life in me yet, it was too late." A slight shudder ran over her shoulders, which Evan, however, did not see.

"And you doubted me!" said he.

"I heard nothing" —

"Of course! – and that was enough to make you think I was nothing but a featherhead!" —

"I thought I was not good enough for you," she said softly.

"Not good enough!" cried Evan. "When you are just a pearl of perfection – a diamond of loveliness – more than all I knew you would be – like a queen rather than like a common mortal. And I could have given you a place fit for you; and here you are" —

"Hush!" she said softly, but it stopped him.

"Why did you never hear from me? I wrote, and wrote, and O, Diana, how I looked for something from you! I walked miles on the way to meet the waggon that brought our mails; I could hardly do my duty, or eat, or sleep, at last. I would ride then to meet the post-carrier, though it did not help me, for I could not open the bags till they were brought into the post; and then I used to go and gallop thirty miles to ride away from myself. Why did you never write one word?"

"I did not know your address," she said faintly.

"I gave it you, over and over."

"You forget, – I never got the letters."

"What became of them?"

"I don't know."

"What was her motive?"

"I suppose – I don't know."

"What do you suppose?"

"What is the use of talking about it, Evan?"

"My poor darling!" said he, looking up in her face again "it has been hard on you too. Oh Di, my Di! I cannot lose you!" —

He was still kneeling before her, and she put her two hands on his head, smoothing or rather pushing back the short locks from his temples on either side, looking as one looks one's last on what one loves. Her eyes were dry, and large with pain which did not allow the eyelids their usual droop; her mouth was in the saddest lines a woman's lips can take, but they did not tremble.