Diana's feelings
now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that
her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could
not quite escape that taint of egotism which is the ruling vice of
fortunate lovers. Her mind was not wide enough to hold much more than
one image, which demanded so large a space.

CHAPTER II.

MRS. SHELDON ACCEPTS HER DESTINY.

Miss Halliday had an interview with her mother that evening in Mrs.
Sheldon's dressing-room, while that lady was preparing for rest, with
considerable elaboration of detail in the way of hair-brushing, and
putting away of neck-ribbons and collars and trinkets in smart little
boxes and handy little drawers, all more or less odorous from the
presence of dainty satin-covered sachets. The sachets, and the drawers,
and boxes, and trinkets were Mrs. Sheldon's best anchorage in this
world. Such things as these were the things that made life worth
endurance for this poor weak little woman; and they were more real to
her than her daughter, because more easy to realise. The beautiful
light-hearted girl was a being whose existence had been always
something of a problem for Georgina Sheldon. She loved her after her
own feeble fashion, and would have jealously asserted her superiority
over every other daughter in the universe; but the power to understand
her or to sympathise with her had not been given to that narrow mind.
The only way in which Mrs. Sheldon's affection showed itself was
unquestioning indulgence and the bestowal of frivolous gifts, chosen
with no special regard to Charlotte's requirements, but rather because
they happened to catch Mrs. Sheldon's eye as they glittered or sparkled
in the windows of Bayswater repositories.

Mr. Sheldon happened to be dining out on this particular evening. He
was a guest at a great City feast, to which some of the richest men
upon 'Change had been bidden; so Miss Halliday had an excellent
opportunity for making her confession.

Poor Georgy was not a little startled by the avowal.

"My darling Lotta!" she screamed, "do you think your papa would ever
consent to such a thing?"

"I think my dear father would have consented to anything likely to
secure my happiness, mamma," the girl answered sadly.

She was thinking how different this crisis in her life would have
seemed if the father she had loved so dearly had been spared to counsel
her.

"I was not thinking of my poor dear first husband," s