lone to
her room, and locked her door. Then she drew back the curtains, and
gazed once more on the same line of hills she had seen rise out of the
wintry mists on Christmas morning. The moon was still behind the down,
and a few stars showed among the clouds.

She turned away, unlocked a drawer, and, falling upon her knees by the
bed, she spread out before her the fragile and time-stained paper that
held her mother's last words to her.

"MY LITTLE DIANA--my precious child,--It may be--it will
be--years before this reaches you. I have made your father
promise to let you grow up without any knowledge or reminder
of me. It was difficult, but at last--he promised. Yet there
must come a time when it will hurt you to think of your
mother. When it does--listen, my darling. Your father knows
that I loved him always! He knows--and he has forgiven. He
knows too what I did--and how--so does Sir James. There is no
place, no pardon for me on earth--but you may still love me,
Diana--still love me--and pray for me. Oh, my little
one!--they brought you in to kiss me a little while ago--and
you looked at me with your blue deep eyes--and then you
kissed me--so softly--a little strangely--with your cool
lips--and now I have made the nurse lift me up that I may
write. A few days--perhaps even a few hours--will bring me
rest. I long for it. And yet it is sweet to be with your
father, and to hear your little feet on the stairs. But most
sweet, perhaps, because it must end so soon. Death makes
these days possible, and for that I bless and welcome death.
I seem to be slipping away on the great stream--so
gently--tired--only your father's hand. Good-bye--my precious
Diana--your dying--and very weary

"MOTHER."

The words sank into Diana's young heart. They dulled the smart of her
crushed love; they awakened a sense of those forces ineffable and
majestic, terrible and yet "to be entreated," which hold and stamp the
human life. Oliver had forsaken her. His kiss was still on her lips. Yet
he had forsaken her. She must stand alone. Only--in the spirit--she put
out clinging hands; she drew her mother to her breast; she smiled into
her father's eyes. One with them; and so one with all who suffer! She
offered her life to those great Forces; to the hidden Will. And thus,
after three days of torture, agony passed into a trance of ecsta