houghts of him were even
more bitter.

The experiences of Diana Paget are not the experiences which make a
pure or perfect woman. There are trials which chasten the heart and
elevate the mind; but it is doubtful whether it can be for the welfare
of any helpless, childish creature to be familiar with falsehood and
chicanery, with debt and dishonour, from the earliest awakening of the
intellect; to feel, from the age of six or seven, all the shame of a
creature who is always eating food that will not be paid for, and lying
on a bed out of which she may be turned at any moment with shrill
reproaches and upbraidings; to hear her father abused and vilified by
vulgar gossips over a tea-table, and to be reminded every day and every
hour that she is an unprofitable encumbrance, a consumer of the bread
of other people's children, an intruder in the household of poverty, a
child whose heritage is shame and dishonour. These things had hardened
the heart of Captain Paget's daughter. There had been no counteracting
influence--no fond, foolish loving creature near at hand to save the
girl from that perdition into which the child or woman who has never
known what it is to be loved is apt to fall. For thirteen years of
Diana's life all love and tenderness, endearing words, caressing
touches, fond admiring looks, had been utterly unknown to her. To sit
in a room with a father who was busy writing letters, and who was wont
to knit his brows peevishly if she stirred, or to mutter an oath if she
spoke; to be sent to a pawnbroker's in the gloaming with her father's
watch, and to be scolded and sworn at on her return if the money-lender
had advanced a less sum than was expected on that security--do not
compose the most delightful or improving experiences of a home life.
But Diana could remember little of a more pleasant character respecting
her existence during those brief periods when she was flung back upon
her father's hands, and while that gentleman was casting about for some
new victim on whom to plant her.

At Hyde Lodge, for the first time, the girl knew what it was to be
loved. Bright, impulsive Charlotte Halliday took a fancy to her, as the
schoolgirl phrase goes, and clung to her with a fond confiding
affection. It may be that the softening influence came too late, or
that there was some touch of natural hardness and bitterness in Diana's
mind; for it is certain that Charlotte's affection did not soften the
girl's heart or lessen