tter before destroying
it? The answer lies in some of the strange, hidden involutions of
feeling and consciousness, which are hard to trace out even by the
person who knows them best. After the thing was done, she wished she
had read it. It may be she feared to find what would stay her hand, or
make her action difficult. It may be that certain stirrings of
conscience warned her that delay might defeat her whole purpose. She
was an obstinate woman, by nature; obstinate to the point of wilful
blindness when necessary; and to do her justice, she was perfectly
incapable of estimating the gain or the loss of such an affection as
Diana's, or of sympathizing with the suffering such a nature may know.
It was not in her; she had no key to it; grant the utmost mischief that
she supposed it even possible she might be doing, and it was as a
summer gale to the cyclone of the Indian seas.

So her conscience troubled her little, and that little was soon
silenced. Perhaps not quite forgotten; for it had the effect, not to
make her more than usual tender of her daughter and indulgent towards
her, as one would expect, but stern, carping and exacting beyond all
her wont. She drove household matters with a tighter rein than ever,
and gave Diana as little time for private thought or musing as the
constant and engrossing occupation of her hands could leave free. But,
however, thoughts are not chained to fingers. Alas! what troubled
calculations Diana worked into her butter, those weeks; and how many
heavy possibilities she shook down from her fingers along with the
drops of water she scattered upon the clothes for the ironing. Her very
nights at last became filled with the anxious cogitations that never
ceased all the day; and Diana awoke morning after morning unrefreshed
and weary from her burdened sleep, and from dreams that reproduced in
fantastic combinations the perplexities of her waking life. Her face
began to grow shadowed and anxious, and her tongue was still. Mrs.
Starling had generally done most of the talking; she did it all now.

Days passed on, and weeks. Mrs. Starling did not find out that anything
was the matter with Diana; partly because she was determined that
nothing should be the matter; and partly because young Flandin came
about the house a good deal, and Mrs. Starling thought Diana to be
vexed, or perhaps in a state of vexed indecision about him. And in
addition, she was a little anxious herself, lest another letter s