th, Lucilla, do you
hear?-and you know whom I mean."

With this as his confession of faith he left her, to go in search of
Diane. He had formed the ultimatum before which, as he believed, she
should find herself obliged to surrender.

It was a day on which Diane's mood was one of comparative peace. She was
engrossed in an occupation which at once soothed her spirits and
appealed to her taste. Madame Cauchat, the land-lady, bewailing the
continued illness of her lingere, Diane had begged to be allowed to take
charge of the linen-room of the hotel, not merely as a means of earning
a living, but because she delighted in such work. Methodical in her
habits and nimble with her needle, the neatness, smoothness, and purity
of piles of white damask stirred all those house-wifely, home-keeping
instincts which are so large a part of every Frenchwoman's nature. Her
fingers busy with the quiet, delicate task of mending, her mind could
dwell with the greater content on such subjects as she had for
satisfaction.

They were more numerous than they had been for a long time past. The
meeting at Lakefield had changed her mental attitude toward Derek Pruyn,
taking a large part of the pain out of her thoughts of him, as well as
out of his thoughts of her. She had avoided seeing him after that one
night, and she had heard nothing from him since; but she knew it was
impossible for him to go on thinking of her altogether harshly. She had
been useful to him; she had saved Dorothea from a great mistake; she had
done it in such a way that no hint of the escapade was likely to become
known outside of the few who had taken part in it; she had put herself
in a relation toward him which, as a final one, was much to be preferred
to that which had existed before. She could therefore pass out of his
life more satisfied than she had dared hope to be with the effect that
she had had upon it. As she stitched she sighed to herself with a
certain comfort, when, glancing up, she saw him standing at the door.
The nature of her thoughts, coupled with his sudden appearance, drew to
her lips a quiet smile.

"They shouldn't have shown you in here," she protested, gently, letting
her work fall to her lap, but not rising from her place.

"I insisted," he explained, briefly, from the threshold.

"You can come in," she smiled, as he continued to stand in the doorway.
"You can even sit down." She pointed to a chair, not far from her own,
going on again with her