e envied and loved her at the same
time. She would accept Charlotte's affection one day with unconcealed
pleasure, and revolt against it on the next day as a species of
patronage which stung her proud heart to the Quick.

"Keep your pity for people who ask you for it," she had exclaimed once
to poor bewildered Charlotte; "I am tired of being consoled and petted.
Go and talk to your prosperous friends, Miss Halliday; I am sick to
death of hearing about your new frocks, and your holidays, and the
presents your mamma is always bringing you."

And then when Charlotte looked at her friend with a sad perplexed face,
Diana relented, and declared that she was a wicked discontented
creature, unworthy of either pity or affection.

"I have had so much misery in my life, that I am very often inclined to
quarrel with happy people without rhyme or reason, or only because they
are happy," she said in explanation of her impatient temper.

"But who knows what happiness may be waiting for you in the future,
Di?" exclaimed Miss Halliday. "You will marry some rich man by-and-by,
and forget that you ever knew what poverty was."

"I wonder where the rich man is to come from who will marry Captain
Paget's daughter?" Diana asked contemptuously. "Never mind where he
comes from; he will come, depend upon it. The handsome young prince
with the palace by the Lake of Como will come to fall in love with my
beautiful Diana, and then she will go and live at Como; and desert her
faithful Charlotte, and live happy ever afterwards."

"Don't talk nonsense, Lotta," cried Miss Paget. "You know what kind of
fate lies before me as well as I do. I looked at myself this morning,
as I was plaiting my hair before the glass--you know how seldom one
gets a turn at the glass in the blue room--and I saw a dark, ugly,
evil-minded-looking creature, whose face frightened me. I have been
getting wicked and ugly ever since I was a child. An aquiline nose and
black eyes will not make a woman a beauty; she wants happiness, and
hope, and love, and all manner of things that I have never known,
before she can be pretty." "I have seen a beautiful woman sweeping a
crossing," said Charlotte doubtfully.

"Yes, but what sort of beauty was it?--a beauty that made you shudder.
Don't talk about these things, Charlotte; you only encourage me to be
bitter and discontented. I daresay I ought to be very happy, when I
remember that I have dinner every day, and shoes and stockings, a