What a pleasure it
was, after finishing a number of pages, to start Eastward toward the
lawyer-regions, full of imaginary cropping incidents, and from that
churchyard Westward, against smoky sunsets, or in welcome fogs, an atom
of the crowd! She had an affection for the crowd. They clothed her.
She laughed at the gloomy forebodings of Danvers concerning the perils
environing ladies in the streets after dark alone. The lights in the
streets after dark and the quick running of her blood, combined to
strike sparks of fancy and inspirit the task of composition at night.
This new, strange, solitary life, cut off from her adulatory society,
both by the shock that made the abyss and by the utter foreignness,
threw her in upon her natural forces, recasting her, and thinning away
her memory of her past days, excepting girlhood, into the remote. She
lived with her girlhood as with a simple little sister. They were two
in one, and she corrected the dreams of the younger, protected and
counselled her very sagely, advising her to love Truth and look always
to Reality for her refreshment. She was ready to say, that no habitable
spot on our planet was healthier and pleasanter than London. As to the
perils haunting the head of Danvers, her experiences assured her of a
perfect immunity from them; and the maligned thoroughfares of a great
city, she was ready to affirm, contrasted favourably with certain
hospitable halls.

The long-suffering Fates permitted her for a term to enjoy the generous
delusion. Subsequently a sweet surprise alleviated the shock she had
sustained. Emma Dunstane's carriage was at her door, and Emma
entered her sitting-room, to tell her of having hired a house in the
neighbourhood, looking on the park. She begged to have her for guest,
sorrowfully anticipating the refusal. At least they were to be near one
another.

'You really like this life in lodgings?' asked Emma, to whom the stiff
furniture and narrow apartments were a dreariness, the miserably small
fire of the sitting-room an aspect of cheerless winter.

'I do,' said Diana; 'yes,' she added with some reserve, and smiled at
her damped enthusiasm, 'I can eat when I like, walk, work--and I am
working! My legs and my pen demand it. Let me be independent! Besides, I
begin to learn something of the bigger world outside the one I know, and
I crush my mincing tastes. In return for that, I get a sense of strength
I had not when I was a drawing-room exotic. Much is