d not have another evening the enjoyment
of her wonted favourite view over the fields and hills; she had done
with all that. Other scenes, another home, would claim her; and then
slowly rose the thought that her freedom was gone; this was the last
time she would belong to herself. Oddly enough, nothing of all this had
come under consideration before. Diana had been stunned; she had
believed for a long time that she was dead, mentally; she had been, as
it were, in a slumber, partly of hopelessness, partly of preoccupation;
now the time of waking had come; and the hidden life in her stirred and
rose and shivered with the consciousness that it _was_ alive and in its
full strength, and what it meant for it to be alive now. As I said,
Diana's nature was too sound and well-balanced and strong for anything
to crush it, or even any part of it; and now she knew that the nerves
of feeling she thought Evan had killed for ever, were all astir and
quivering, and would never be fooled into slumbering again. I cannot
tell how all this dawned and broke to her consciousness. She had sat
down at her window a calm, weary-hearted girl, placid, and with even a
dull sort of content upon her; so she had sat and dreamed awhile; and
then June and moonlight, and her honeysuckle, and the roses, and the
memory of her free childish days, and the image of her lost lover, and
the thought of where she was standing, by degrees--how gently they did
it, too--roused her and pricked her up to the consciousness of what she
going to do. What was she going to do? Marry a man who had no real
place in her heart. She had thought it did not matter; she had thought
she was dead; now all at once she knew that she was alive in every
fibre, and that it mattered fearfully. The idea of Mr. Masters stung
her, not as novel-writers say "almost to madness,"--for there was no
such irregularity in Diana's round, sound, healthy nature,--but to pain
that seemed unbearable. No confusion in her brain, and no dulness now;
on the contrary, an intense consciousness of all that her position
involved. She had made a mistake, like many another; unlike many, she
had found it out early. She was going to marry a man to whom she had no
love to give; and she knew now that the life she must thenceforth lead
would be daily torture. Almost the worse because she had for Mr.
Masters so deep a respect and so true an appreciation. And he loved
her; of that there was no question; the whole affection