s or soldiers to be in them," she
added, looking at Mr. Masters, as if she had found a happy final cause
for the existence of the aborigines of the country.

"What is the name of the place?" Diana asked.

"I declare I've forgotten. Fort----,I can't think of any name but
Vancouver, and it isn't that. Gertrude, what _is_ the name of that
place? Do you know, I can't tell whether it is in Arizona or
Wisconsin!" And Mrs. Reverdy laughed at her geographical innocence.

Gertrude "didn't remember."

"He is not so far off as Vancouver, I think," said Mr. Masters.

"No,--O no, not so far as that; but he might just as well. When you get
to a certain distance, it don't signify whether it is more or less; you
can't get at people, and they can't get at you. _You_ have seemed to be
at that distance lately, Basil. What a dreadful name! How came you to
be called such a name?"

"Be thankful it is no worse," said the minister gravely. "I might have
been called Lactantius."

"Lactantius! Impossible. Was there ever a man named Lactantius?"

"Certainly."

"'Tain't any worse than Ichabod," remarked Mrs. Starling.

"Nothing can be worse than Ichabod," said Mr. Masters in the same dry
way. "It means, 'The glory is departed.'"

"The Ichabods I knew, never had any glory to begin with," said Mrs.
Starling.

But the minister laughed at this, and so gaily that it was infectious.
Mrs. Starling joined in, without well knowing why; the lady visitors
seemed to be very much amused. Diana tried to laugh, with lips that
felt rigid as steel. The minister's eye came to hers too, she knew, to
see how the fun went with her. And then the ladies rose, took a very
flattering leave, and departed, carrying Mr. Masters off with them.

"I am coming to look at those books of yours soon," he said, as he
shook hands with Diana. "May I?"

Diana made her answer as civil as she could, with those stiff lips; how
she bade good-bye to the others she never knew. As her mother attended
them to the garden gate, she went up the stairs to her room, feeling
now it was the first time that the pain _could not be borne_. Seeing
these people had brought Evan so near, and hearing them talk had put
him at such an impossible distance. Diana pressed both hands on her
heart, and stood looking out of her window at the departing carriage.
What could she do? Nothing that she could think of, and to do nothing
was the intolerable part of it. Any, the most tedious and lingering