to her a perpetual enigma and
mystery when she was with him; and now that she was far away from him,
he was more than ever an inscrutable creature. Was he altogether vile,
she wondered, or was there some redeeming virtue in his nature? He had
taken trouble to secure her escape from shame and disgrace, and in
doing this he surely had performed a good action; but was it not just
possible that he had taken this opportunity of getting rid of her
because her presence was alike wearisome and inconvenient? She thought
very bitterly of her fellow Bohemian when this view of his conduct
presented itself to her; how heartlessly he had shuffled her off,--how
cruelly he had sent her out into the hard pitiless world, to find a
shelter as best she might!

"What would have become of me if Priscilla had refused to take me in?"
she asked herself. "I wonder whether Mr. Hawkehurst ever considered
that."

* * * * *

More than one letter had come to Diana from her old companion since her
flight from the little Belgian watering-place. The first letter told
her that her father had "tided over _that_ business, and was in better
feather than before the burst-up at the Hotel d'Orange." The letter was
dated from Paris, but gave no information as to the present
arrangements or future plans of the writer and his companion. Another
letter, dated from the same place, but not from the same address, came
to her six months afterwards, and anon another; and it was such a
wonderful thing for Captain Paget to inhabit the same city for twelve
months together, that Diana began to cherish faint hopes of some
amendment in the scheme of her father's life and of Valentine's, since
any improvement in her father's position would involve an improvement
in that of his _protege_.

Miss Paget's regard for her father was by no means an absorbing
affection. The Captain had never cared to conceal his indifference for
his only child, or pretended to think her anything but a nuisance and
an encumbrance--a superfluous piece of luggage more difficult to
dispose of than any other luggage, and altogether a stumbling-block in
the stony path of a man who has to live by his wits. So perhaps it is
scarcely strange that Diana did not think of her absent father with any
passionate tenderness or sad yearning love. She thought of him very
often; but her thoughts of him were painful and bitter. She thought
still more often of his companion; and her t