her society very
uncomfortable. There was never a word spoken pleasantly, by any chance,
about anything; good was not commended, and ill was not deplored; but
both, good and ill, were taken up in the same sharp, acrid, cynical
tone, or treated with the like restless mockery. Mrs. Starling found no
fault with Diana, other than by this bitter manner of handling every
subject that came up; at the same time she made the little house where
they lived together a place of thunderous atmosphere, where it was
impossible to draw breath freely and peacefully. They were very much
shut up to one another, too. That Sunday storm in December had been
followed by successive falls of snow, so deep that the ways were
encumbered, and travelling more difficult than usual in Pleasant Valley
even in winter. There was very little getting about between the
neighbours' houses; and the people let their social qualities wait for
spring and summer to develope themselves. Diana and her mother scarcely
saw anybody. Nick Boddington at rare intervals looked in. Joe Bartlett
once or twice came with a message from his mother; once Diana had gone
down to see her. Even Mr. Masters made his appearance at the little
brown farm-house less frequently than might have been supposed; for, in
truth, Mrs. Starling's presence made his visits rather unsatisfactory;
and besides the two kitchen fires, there was none other in the house to
which Diana and he could withdraw and see each other alone. So he came
only now and then, and generally did not stay very long.

To Diana, all this while, the coming or the going, the solitude or the
company, even the good or ill humours of her mother, seemed to be of
little importance. She lived her own shut-up, deadened, secret life
through it all, and had no nerves of sensation near enough to the
surface to be affected much by what went on outside of her. What though
her mother was all the while in a rasped sort of state? it could not
rasp Diana; she seemed to wear a coat of mail. Neighbours? no
neighbours were anything to her one way or another; if she could be
said to like anything, it was to be quite alone and see and hear
nobody. Her marriage she looked at in the same dull way; with a
thought, so far as she gave it a thought, that in the minister's house
her life would be more quiet, and peace and good-will would replace the
eager disquiet around her which, without minding it, Diana yet
perceived. More quiet and better, she hop