hing left for her but to be a cold
shadow walking beside this good man who was so full of all gentle and
noble affections. Well, she was glad, since he wanted her, that she
might lead her colourless existence by his side. That was the last
feeling with which she rose from her knees.

CHAPTER XX.

SETTLED.

It was a very wild storm yet through which Mr. Masters drove Diana
home. Still the wind blew hard, and the snow came driving and beating
down upon their shoulders and faces in thick white masses; and the
drifts had piled up in some places very high. More than once the
sleigh, Prince and all, was near being lodged in a snow-bank, from
which the getting free would have been a work of time; Mr. Masters had
to get out and do some rather complicated engineering; and withal,
through the thick and heavy snowfall it was difficult to see what they
were coming to. Patience and coolness and good driving got the better
of dangers however, and slowly the way was put behind them. They met
nobody.

"Mr. Masters," said Diana suddenly, "you will have to stay at our house
to-night. You can never get back."

"I don't believe Mrs. Starling will let me go," said the minister.

Diana did not know exactly how to understand this. It struck a sort of
chill to her, that he was intending at once to proclaim their new
relations to each other; yet she could find nothing to object, and
indeed she did not wish to object.

"Mother will not be pleased," she ventured after a pause.

"No, I do not expect it. We have got to face that. But she is a wise
woman, and will know how to accommodate herself to things when she
knows she can't help it. I will put Prince up and give him some supper,
and then we will see."

Diana accordingly went in alone. But, as it happened, Mrs. Starling was
busied with some affairs in the outer kitchen; and Diana passed through
and got up to her own room without any encounter. She was glad.
Encounters were not in her line. She was somewhat leisurely, therefore,
in taking off her wrappings and changing her dress. And as the minister
was on the other hand as soon done with his ministrations to Prince as
circumstances and the snow permitted, it fell out that they re-entered
the kitchen almost at the same moment, though by different doors. It
was the lean-to kitchen, the only place where fire was kept on Sunday:
and indeed that was the usual winter dwelling-room, a little outer
kitchen serving for all the di