Diana was not put to the trial next day of venturing her precious things to harsh handling. A very uncommon thing happened. Mrs. Starling was not well, and kept her bed.

She had caught cold, she confessed, by some imprudence the day before; and symptoms of pleurisy made it impossible that she should fight sickness as she liked to fight it, on foot. The doctor was not to be thought of; Mrs. Starling gave her best and only confidence to her own skill; but even that bade her lie by and "give up."

Diana had the whole house on her hands, as well as the nursing. Truth to tell, this last was not much. Mrs. Starling would have very little of her daughter's presence; still less of her ministrations. To be "let alone" was her principal demand, and that Diana should "keep things straight below." Diana did that. The house went on as well as ever; and even the farm affairs received the needful supervision. Josiah Davis was duly ordered, fed, and dismissed; and when evening came, Diana was dressed in order, bright, and ready for company. Company it pleased her to receive in the lean-to kitchen; the sound of voices and laughter beneath her would have roused Mrs. Starling to a degree of excitement from which it would have been impossible to keep back anything; and probably to a degree of consequent indignation which would have been capable of very informal measures of ejectment regarding the intruder. No; Diana could not risk that. She must wait till her mother's nerves and temper were at least in their ordinary state of wholesome calm, before she would shock them by the disclosures she had to make. And almost by their preciousness to herself, Diana gauged their unwelcomeness to her mother. It was always so. The two natures were so unlike, that not even the long habit of years could draw them into sympathy. They thought alike about nothing except the housewifely matters of practical life. So these evenings when Mrs. Starling was ill, Diana had her lamp and her fire in the lean-to kitchen; and there were held the long talks with Mr. Knowlton which made all the days of September so golden, – days when Diana's hands were too busy to let her see him, and he was told he must not come except at night; but through all the business streamed the radiant glow of the last night's talk, like the September sunlight through the misty air.

So the days went by; and Mrs. Starling was kept a prisoner; pain and weakness warning her she must not dare try anything else. And in their engrossment the two young people hardly noticed how the time flew. People in Pleasant Valley were not in the habit of paying visits to one another in the evenings, unless specially invited; so nobody discovered that Evan came nightly to Mrs. Starling's house; and if his own people wondered at his absence from home, they could do no more. Suspicion had no ground to go upon in any particular direction.

The month had been glorious with golden leaves and golden sunshine, until the middle was more than past. Then came a September storm; an equinoctial, the people said; as furious as the preceding days had been gentle. Whirlwinds of tempest, and floods of rain; legions of clouds, rank after rank, bringing the winds in their folds; or did the winds bring them? All one day and night and all the next day, the storm continued; and night darkened early upon Pleasant Valley with no prospect of a change. Diana had watched for it a little eagerly; Evan's visit was lost the night before, of course; it was much to lose, when September days were growing few; and now another night he could not come. Diana stood at the lean-to door after supper, looking and making her conclusions sorrowfully. It was darkening fast; very dark it would be, for there was no moon. The rain came down in streams, thick and grey. The branches of the elm trees swung and swayed pitilessly in the wind, beating against each other; while the wind whistled and shouted its intention of keeping on so all night. "He can't come," sighed Diana for the fifth or sixth time to herself; and she shut the door. It could be borne, however, to lose two evenings, when they had enjoyed so many together, and had so many more to look forward to; and with that mixture in her heart of content and longing, which everybody knows, Diana trimmed her lamp and sat down to sew. How the wind roared! She must trim her fire too, or the room would be full of smoke. She made the fire up; and then the snare of its leaping flames and glowing coal bed drew her from her work; she sat looking and thinking, in a fulness of happiness to which all the roar of the storm only served for a foil. She heard the drip, drip of the rain; the fast-running stream from the overcharged eaves trough; then the thunder of the wind sweeping over the house in a great gust; and the whistle of the elm branches as they swung through the air like tremendous lithe switches, beating and writhing and straining in the fury of the blast. Looking into the clear, glowing flames, Diana heard it all, with a certain sense of enjoyment; when in the midst of it she heard another sound, a little thing, but distinguishable from all the rest; the sound of a foot upon the little stone before the door. Only one foot it could be in the world; Diana started up, and was standing with lips apart, facing the door, when it opened, and a man came in enveloped in a huge cloak, dripping at every point.

"Evan!" Diana's exclamation was, with an utterance between joy and dread.

"Yes," said he as he came forward into the room, – "I've got orders."

Without another word she helped relieve him of his cloak and went with it to the outer kitchen, where she hung it carefully to dry. As she came back, Evan was standing in front of the fire, looking gravely into it. The light danced and gleamed upon the gold buttons on his breast, and touched the gold bands on his shoulders; it was a very stately and graceful figure to Diana's eyes. He turned a little, took her into his arms, and then they both stood silent and still.

"I've got my orders," Knowlton repeated in a low tone.

"To go soon, Evan?"

"Immediately."

"I knew it, when I heard your foot at the door."

They were both still again, while the storm swept over the house in a fresh burst, the wind rushing by as if it was glad he was going and meant he should. Perhaps the two did not hear it; but I think Diana did. The rain poured down in a kind of fury.

"How could you get here, Evan?" she asked, looking up at him.

"I must, I had only to-night."

"You are not wet?"

"No, darling! Rain is nothing to me. How are you? and how is your mother?"

"She is better. She is getting well."

"And you? You are most like a magnolia tree, full of its white magnificent blossoms; sweet in a kind of wealth of sweetness and bountiful beauty. One blossom would do for a comparison for ordinary women; but you are like the whole tree."

"Suppose I were to find comparisons for you?"

"Ay, suppose you did. What would you liken me to?" said he with a sparkle of the eyes, which quite indisposed Diana from giving any more fuel to the fire that supplied it.

"What, Di? You might as well give me all the comfort you can to take away with me. I shall need it. And it will be long before I can come back for more. What am I like?"

"Would you feel any better for thinking yourself like a pine tree? or a green hemlock? one of those up in our ravine of the brook?"

"Ah, our ravine of the brook! Those days are all gone. I wish I were a green hemlock anywhere, with you a magnolia beside me; or better, a climbing rose hanging upon me! If I could take you, Di!"

The pang of the wish was very keen in her; the leap of the will towards impossibilities; but she said nothing and stood quite motionless.

"I cannot come back for you at Christmas, Di."

"Where are you going, Evan."

"Where I would not take you, anyhow. I am under orders to report myself at a post away off on the Indian frontier, a long journey from here; and a rough, wild place never fit for such as you. Of course we young officers are the ones to be sent to such places; unless we happen to have influence at headquarters, which I haven't. But I shall not stay there for ever."

"Must you go just where they send you?"

"Yes," he said with a laugh. "A soldier cannot choose."

"Must you stay as long as they keep you there?"

"Yes, of course. But there is no use in looking at it gloomily, Di. The months will pass, give them time; and years are made of months. The good time will come at last. I'm not the first who has had to bear this sort of thing."

"Will you have to stay years there?"

"Can't tell. I may. It depends on what is doing, and how much I am wanted. Probably I may have to stay two years at least; perhaps three."

"But you can get a furlough and come for a little while, Evan?" said

Diana; her voice sounded frightened.

"That's the worst of it!" said Knowlton. "I don't know whether I can or not."

"Why, Evan? don't they always?"

"Generally it can be done if the distance is not too great, and you are not too useful. You see, there are seldom too many officers on hand, at those out-of-the-way posts."

"Is there so much to do?" said Diana, half mechanically. Her thoughts were going farther; for grant the facts, what did the reasons matter?

"There's a good deal to do sometimes," Evan answered in the same way, thinking of more than he chose to speak. They stood silent again awhile. Diana was clasped in Knowlton's arms; her cheek rested on his shoulder; they both looked to the fire for consolation. Snapping, sparkling, glowing, as it has done in the face of so many of our sorrows, small and great, is there no consolation or suggestion to be got out of it? Perhaps from it came the suggestion at last that they should sit down. Evan brought a chair for Diana and placed one for himself close beside it, and they sat down, holding fast each other's hands.

Was it also the counsel of the fire that they should sit there all night? For it was what they did. The fire burned gloriously; the lamp went out; the red lights leaped and flickered all over floor and ceiling; and in front of the blaze sat the two, and talked; enough to last two years, you and I might say; but alas! to them it was but a whetting of the appetite that was to undergo such famine.

"If I could only take you with me, my darling!" Evan said for the twentieth time. And Diana was silent at first; then she said,

"It would be pleasant to go through hardships together."

"No, it wouldn't!" said Evan. "Not hardships for you, my beauty! They are all very well for me; in a soldier's line; but not for you!"

"A soldier's wife ought not to be altogether unworthy of him," Diana answered.

"Nor he of her. So I wouldn't take you if I could where I am going. A soldier's wife will have hardships enough, first and last, no fear; but some places are not fit for women anyhow. I wish I could have seen Mrs. Starling, though, and had it out with her."

"Had it out!" repeated Diana.

"Yes. I should have a little bit of a fight, shouldn't I? She don't like me much. I wonder why?"

"Evan," said Diana after a minute's thought, "if you are to be so long away, there is no need to speak to anybody about our affair just now. It is our affair; let it stay so. It is our secret. I should like it much better to keep it a secret. I don't want to hear people's talk. Will you?"

"But our letters, my dear; they will tell your mother."

"Mother will not see mine. And she is not likely to see yours; I shall go to the post office myself. If she did, and found it out, I could keep her quiet easily enough. She would not want to speak, any more than I."

Evan combated this resolution for some time. He wished to have Diana friends with his sisters and at home at Elmfield. But Diana had her own views, and desired so strongly to keep her secret to herself, during the first part at least of what threatened to be a long engagement, that at last he yielded. It did not matter much to him, he said, away off in the wilds.

So that subject was dismissed; and before the fantasia of the flames they sat and composed a fantasia of life for themselves; as bright, as various, as bewitching, as evanishing; the visions of which were mingled with the leaping and changing purple and flame tints, the sparkle and the flash of the fire. Diana could never stand before a fire of hickory logs and fail to see her life-story reappear as she had seen it that night.

The hours went by.

"It's too bad to keep you up so, my darling!" Evan remarked. "I am selfish."

"No indeed! But you must want something, Evan! I had forgotten all about it."

He said he wanted nothing, but her; however, Diana's energies were roused. She ran into the back kitchen, and came from thence with the tea-kettle in her hands, filled. She was not allowed to set it down, to be sure, but under her directions it was bestowed in front of the glowing coals. Then, with noiseless, rapid movements, she brought a little table to the hearth and fetched cups and plates. And then she spread the board. There was a cold ham on the big table; and round white slices of bread, such as cities never see; and cake, light and fruity; and yellow butter; and a cream pie, another dainty that confectioners are innocent of; and presently the fragrance of coffee filled the old lean-to to the very roof. Evan laughed at her, but confessed himself hungry, and Diana had it all her own way. For once, this rare once, she would have the pleasure, she and Evan alone; many a day would come and go before she might have it again. So she thought as she poured coffee upon the cream in his cup. And whether the pleasure or the pain were the keenest even then, I cannot tell; but it was one of those minutes when one chooses the pleasure, and will have it and will taste it, whatever lies at the bottom of the draught. The small hours of night, the fire-lit kitchen, the daintily-spread table, she and Evan at opposite sides of it; the pleasure of ministering, such as every woman knows; the beauty of her bread, the magnificence of her coffee, the perfection of her cookery, the exultation of seeing him enjoy it; while her heart was storing up its treasure of sorrow for the unfolding by and by, and knew it, and covered it up, and went on enjoying the minute. The criticism is sometimes made upon a writer here and there, that he talks too much about eating; and in a high-finished and artificial state of society it is indeed true that eating is eating, and nothing more. Servants prepare the viands, and servants bring them; and the result is more or less agreeable and satisfactory, but can hardly be said to have much of poetry or sentiment about it. The case is not so with humbler livers on the earth's surface. Sympathy and affection and tender ministry are wrought into the very pie-crust, and glow in the brown loaves as they come out of the oven; and are specially seen in the shortcake for tea, and the favourite dish at dinner, and the unexpected dumpling. Among the working classes, too, – it is true only of them? – the meals are the breathing spaces of humanity, the resting spots, where the members of the household come together to see each other's faces for a moment at leisure, and to confer over matters of common interest that have no chance in the rush and the whirl of the hours of toil. At any rate, I know there was much more than the mere taste of the coffee in the cups that Diana filled and Knowlton emptied; much more than the supply of bodily want in the bread they eat.

The repast was prolonged and varied with very much talk; but it was done at last. The kettle was set on one side, the table pushed back, and Evan looked at his watch. Still talk went on quietly for a good while longer.

"At what hour does your chief of staff open his barn doors?" said Evan, looking at his watch again.

"Early," said Diana, not showing the heart-thrust the question had given her. "Not till it is light, though."

"It will be desirable that I should get off before light, then. It is not best to astonish him on this occasion."

"It is not near light yet, Evan?"

He laughed, and looked at her. "Do you know, I don't know when that moment comes? I have not seen it once since I have been at Elmfield. It shows how little truth there is in the theories of education."

Diana did not ask what he meant. She went to the door and looked out. It was profoundly dark yet. It was also still. The rain was not falling; the wind had ceased; hush and darkness were abroad. She came back to the fire and asked what o'clock it was. Evan looked. They had an hour yet; but it was an hour they could make little use of. The night was gone. They stood side by side on the hearth, Evan's arm round her; now and then repeating something which had been already spoken of; really endeavouring to make the most of the mere fact of being together. But the minutes went too fast. Again and again Diana went to the window; the second time saw, with that nameless pang at her heart, that the eastern horizon was taking the grey, grave light of coming dawn. Mr. Knowlton went out then presently, saddled his horse, and brought him out to the fence, all ready. For a few minutes they waited yet, and watched the grey light creeping up; then, before anything was clearly discernible through the dusky gloom, the last farewell was taken; Evan mounted and walked his horse softly away from the door.

CHAPTER XII.
THE ASHES OF THE FIRE

Diana sat down with her face in her hands, and was still. She felt like a person stunned. It was very still all around her. The fire gently breathed and snapped; the living presence that had been there was gone. A great feeling of loneliness smote her. But there was leisure for few tears just then; and too high-wrought a state of the nerves to seek much indulgence in them. A little while, and Josiah would be there with his pails of milk; there was something to be done first.

And quick, as another look from the window assured her. Things were becoming visible out of doors. Diana roused herself, though every movement had to be with pain, and went about her work. It was hard to move the chair in which Evan had been sitting; it was hard to move the table around which they had been so happy; even that little trace of last night could not be kept. Evan's cup, Evan's plate, the bit of bread he had left on it, Diana's fingers were dilatory and unwilling in dealing with them. But then she roused herself and dallied no longer. Table and cups and eatables were safely removed; the kitchen brushed up, and the table set for breakfast: the fire made in the outer stove, and the kettle put on; though the touch of the kettle hurt her fingers, remembering when she had touched it last. Every tell-tale circumstance was put out of the way, and the night of watching locked up among the most precious stores of Diana's memory. She opened the lean-to door then.

The morning was rising fair. Clouds and wind had wearied themselves out, as it might be; and nature was in a great hush. Racks of vapour were scattered overhead, slowly moving away in some current of air that carried them; but below there was not a breath stirring. A little drip, drip from the leaves only told how heavily they had been surcharged; the long pendent branches of the elm hung moveless, as if they were resting after last night's thrashing about. And as Diana looked, the touches of gold began to come upon the hills and then on the tree-tops. It was lovely and fair as ever; but to Diana it was a changed world. She was not the same, and nothing would ever be just the same as yesterday it had been. She felt that, as she looked. She had lost and she had gained. Just now the loss came keenest. The world seemed singularly empty. The noise of entering feet behind her brought her back to common life. It was Josiah and the milk pails.

"Hain't set up all night, hev' ye?" was Josiah's startling remark. "I vow! you get the start of the old lady herself. I b'ain't ready for breakfast yet, if you be."

"It will be ready soon, Josiah."

"Mornin's is gettin' short," Josiah went on. "One o' them pesky barn doors got loose in the night, and it's beat itself 'most off the hinges, I guess. I must see and get it fixed afore Mis' Starlin's round, or she'll be hoppin'. The wind was enough to take the ruff off, but how it could lift that 'ere heavy latch, I don't see."

Diana went to the dairy without any discussion of the subject. Coming back to the kitchen, she was equally startled and dismayed to see her mother entering by the inner door. If there was one thing Diana longed for this morning, it was, to be alone. Josiah and the farm boys were hardly a hindrance. She had thought her mother could not be.

"Are you fit to be down-stairs, mother?" she exclaimed.

"Might as well be down as up," said Mrs. Starling. "Can't get well lying in bed. I'm tired to death with it all these days; and last night I couldn't sleep half the night; seemed to me I heard all sorts of noises. If I'd had a light I'd ha' got up then. I thought the house was coming down about my ears; and if it was, I'd rather be up to see."

"The wind blew so."

"You heard it too, did you? When did you come down, Diana? I hain't heard the first sound of your door. 'Twarn't light, was it?"

"I have been up a good while. But you are not fit to do the least thing, mother. I was going to bring you your breakfast."

"If there's a thing I hate, it's to have my meals in bed. I don't want anything, to begin with; and I can take it better here. What have you got, Diana? You may make me a cup of tea. I don't feel as though I could touch coffee. What's the use o' your gettin' up so early?"

"I've all to do, you know, mother."

"No use in burning wood and lights half the night, though. The day's long enough. When did you bake?"

Diana answered this and several other similar household questions, and got her mother a cup of tea. But though it was accompanied with a nice bit of toast, Mrs. Starling looked with a dissatisfied air at the more substantial breakfast her daughter was setting on the table.

"I never could eat slops. Diana, you may give me some o' that pork. And a potato."

"Mother, I do not believe it is good for you."

"Good for me? And I have eat it all my life."

"But when you were well."

"I'm well enough. Put some of the gravy on, Diana. I'll never get my strength back on toasted chips."

The men came in, and Mrs. Starling held an animated dialogue with her factotum about farm affairs; while Diana sat behind her big coffee-pot – not the one she had used last night, and wondered if that was all a dream; more sadly, if she should ever dream again. And why her mother could not have staid in her room one day more. One day more! —

"He hain't begun to get his ploughing ahead," said Mrs. Starling, as the door closed on the delinquent.

"What, mother?" Diana asked, starting.

"Ploughing. You haven't kept things a-going, as I see," returned her mother. "Josiah's all behind, as usual. If I could be a man half the time, I could get on. He ought to have had the whole west field ploughed, while I've been sick."

"I don't know so much about it as you do, mother."

"I know you don't. You have too much readin' to do. There's a pane of glass broken in that window, Diana."

"Yes, mother. I know it."

"How did it come?"

"I don't know."

"You'll never get along, Diana, till you know everything that happens in your house. You aren't fit anyhow to be a poor woman. If you're rich, why you can get a new pane of glass, and there's the end of it. I'm not so rich as all that comes to."

"Getting a pane of glass, mother?"

"Without knowing what for."

"But how does it help the matter to know what for? The glass must be got anyway."

"If you know what for, it won't be to do another time. You'll find a way to stop it. I'll warrant, now, Diana, you haven't had the ashes cleared out of that stove for a week."

"Why, mother?"

"It smokes. It always does smoke when it gets full of ashes; and it never smokes when it ain't."

"There is no smoke here, surely."

"I smell it. I can smell anything there is about. I don't know whatever there was in the house last night that smelled like coffee; but I a'most thought there was somebody makin' it down-stairs. I smelled it as plain as could be. If I could ha' got into my shoes, I believe I would ha' come down to see, just to get rid of the notion, it worried me so. It beats me now, what it could ha' been."

Diana turned away with the cups she had been wiping, that she might not show her face.

"Don't you never have your ashes took up, Diana?" cried Mrs. Starling, who, when much exercised on household matters, sometimes forgot her grammar.

"Yes, mother."

"When did you have 'em took up in this chimney?"

"I do not remember – yesterday, I guess," said Diana vaguely.

"You never burnt all the ashes there is there since yesterday morning. You'd have had to sit up all night to do it; and burn a good lot o' wood on your fire, too."

"Mother," exclaimed Diana in desperation, "I don't suppose everything is just as it would be if you'd been round all these days."

"I guess it ain't," said Mrs. Starling. "There's where you are wanting, Diana. Your hands are good enough, but I wouldn't give much for your eyes. There's where you'd grow poor, if you weren't poor a'ready. Now you didn't know when that pane o' glass was broke. You'd go round and round, and a pane o' glass'd knock out here, and a quart of oil 'ud leak out there, and you'd lose a pound of flour between the sieve and the barrel, and you'd never know how or where."

"Mother," said Diana, "you know I never spill flour or anything else; no more than you do."

"No, but it would go, I mean, and you never the wiser. It ain't the way to get along, unless you mean to marry a rich man. Now look at that heap o' ashes! I declare, it beats me to know what you have been doing to burn so much wood here; and mild weather, too. Who has been here to see you, since I've been laid up?"

"Several people came to ask about you."

"Who did? and who didn't? that came at all."

"Joe Bartlett – and Mr. Masters – and Mrs. Delamater, – I can't tell you all, mother; there's been a good many."

"Tell me the men that have been here.

"Well, those I said; and Will Flandin, and Nick, and Mr. Knowlton."

"Was he here more than once?"

"Yes."

"How much more?"

"Mother, how do I know? I didn't keep count."

"Didn't keep count, eh?" Mrs. Starling repeated. "Must have been frequent company, I judge. Diana, you mind what I told you?"

Diana made no answer.

"You shall have nothing to do with him," Mrs. Starling went on. "You never shall. You sha'n't take up with any one that holds himself above me. I'll be glad when his time's up; and I hope it'll be long before he'll have another. Once he gets away, he'll think no more of you, that's one comfort."

Diana knew that was not true; but it hurt her to have it said. She could stand no more of her mother's talk; she left her and went off to the dairy, till Mrs. Starling crept up-stairs again. Then Diana came and opened the lean-to door and looked out for a breath of refreshment. The morning was going on its way in beauty. Little clouds drifted over the deep blue sky; the mellow September light lay on fields and hills; the long branches of the elm swayed gently to and fro in the gentle air that drove the clouds. But oh for the wind and the storm of last night, and the figure that stood beside her before the chimney fire! The gladsome light seemed to mock her, and the soft breeze gave her touches of pain. She shut the door and went back to her work.