iana Paget sat at her eternal embroidery-frame, picking up
beads on her needle with the precision of some self-feeding machine.
The little glass beads made a hard clicking sound as they dropped from
her needle,--a very frosty, unpromising sound, as it seemed to
Charlotte's hyper-sensitive ear.

There had been an unwonted reserve between the girls since Charlotte's
return,--a reserve which arose, on Miss Halliday's part, from the
contest between girlish shyness and the eager desire for a confidante;
and on the part of Miss Paget, from that gloomy discontent which had of
late possessed her.

She watched Charlotte furtively as she picked up her beads--watched her
wonderingly, unable to comprehend the happiness that gave such
spiritual brightness to her eyes. It was no longer the childlike gaiety
of heart which had made Miss Halliday's girlhood so pleasant. It was
the thoughtful, serene delight of womanhood.

"She can care very little for Valentine," Diana thought, "or she could
scarcely seem so happy after such a long separation. I doubt if these
bewitching women who enchant all the world know what it is to feel
deeply. Happiness is a habit with this girl. Valentine's attentions
were very pleasant to her. The pretty little romance was very agreeable
while it lasted; but at the first interruption of the story she shuts
the book, and thinks of it no more. O, if my Creator had made _me_ like
that! If I could forget the days we spent together, and the dream I
dreamt!"

That never-to-be-forgotten vision came back to Diana Paget as she sat
at her work; and for a few minutes the clicking sound of the beads
ceased, while she waited with clasped hands until the shadows should
have passed before her eyes. The old dream came back to her like a
picture, bright with colour and light. But the airy habitation which
she had built for herself of old was no "palace lifting to Italian
heavens its marble roof." It was only a commonplace lodging in a street
running out of the Strand, with just a peep of the river from a trim
little balcony. An airy second-floor sitting-room, with engraved
portraits of the great writers on the newly-papered walls: on one side
an office-desk, on the other a work-table. The unpretending shelter of
a newspaper hack, who lives _a jour la journee_, and whose wife must
achieve wonders in the way of domestic economy in order to eke out his
modest earnings.

This was Diana Paget's vision of Paradise, and it seeme