's mental nature was too sound and rich not to take kindly
the new seeds dropped into the soil. She had gone just far enough in
her own private reading and thinking to be all ready to spring forward
in the wider sphere to which she was invited, and in which a hand took
hers to help her along. The consciousness of awakening power, too, and
of enlarging the bounds of her world, drew her on. Sometimes in Basil's
study, where he had arranged a place for her, sometimes down-stairs in
her own little parlour, Diana pored over books and turned the leaves of
dictionaries; and felt her way along the mazes of Latin stateliness, or
wondered and thrilled at the beauty of the Greek words of the New
Testament as her husband explained them to her. Or she wrought out
problems; or she wrote abstracts; or she dived into depths of
philosophical speculation. Then Diana began to learn French, and very
soon was delighting herself in one or other of a fine collection of
French classics which filled certain shelves in the library. There was,
besides all the motives above mentioned which quickened and stimulated
her zeal for learning, another very subtle underlying cause which had
not a little to do with her unflagging energy in pursuit of her
objects. Nay, there were two. Diana did earnestly wish to please her
husband, and for his sake to become, so far as cultivation would do it,
a fit companion for him. That she knew. But she scarcely knew, how
beneath all that, and mightier than all that, was the impulse to make
herself worthy of the other man whose companion now she would never be.
Subtle, as so many of our springs of action are, unrecognised, it drove
her with an incessant impulse. To be such a woman as Evan would have
been proud of; such a one as he would have liked to stand by his side
anywhere; one that he need not have feared to present in any society.
Diana strove for it, and that although Evan would never know it, and it
did not in the least concern him. And as she felt from time to time
that she was attaining her end and coming nearer and nearer to what she
wished to be, Diana was glad with a secret joy, which was not the love
of knowledge, nor the pride of personal ambition, nor the duty of an
affectionate wife. As I said, she did not recognise it; if she had, I
think she would have tried to banish it.

One afternoon she was sitting by her table at the study window, where
she had been very busy, but was not busy now. The window was