_too_
hard-hearted, Diana."

If the woman could have spoken without laughing! That little
meaningless trill at the end of everything made Diana nearly wild. She
could find no answer to the last speech, and so remained silent.

"Now I have seen you again, I declare I don't wonder at anything. I was
inclined to quarrel with him, you know, thinking it was just a boyish
foolish fancy that he ought to get over; I was a little out of patience
with him; but now I see you, I take it all back. I declare, you're a
woman the men might rave about. You mustn't mind if they do."

"There is another question, whether my husband will mind." She said the
words with a hard, relentless force upon herself.

"Is he jealous?" laughing.

"He has no reason."

"Reason! O, people are jealous without reason; they don't wait for
that. Better without than with. How is Mr. Masters? is he one of that
kind? And how came he to marry you?"

"You ought not to wonder at it, with the opinion you have expressed of
me."

"O no, I don't wonder at all! But somebody else wanted to marry you
too; and somebody else thought he had the best right. I am afraid you
flirted with him. Or was it with Mr. Masters you flirted? I didn't
think you were a girl to flirt; but I see! You would keep just quietly
still, and they would flutter round you, like moths round a candle, and
it would be their own fault if they both got burned. Has Mr. Masters
got burned? My poor moth has singed his wings badly, I can tell you. I
am very sorry for him."

"So am I," Diana said gravely.

"Are you? Are you really? Are you sorry for him? May I tell him you are
sorry?"

"You have not said whom you are talking about," Diana answered, with a
coldness which she wondered at when she said it.

"O, but you know! There is only one person I could be talking about.
There is only one I could care enough about to be talking for him. You
cannot help but know. May I tell him you say you are sorry for him? It
would be a sort of comfort, and he wants it."

"You must ask Mr. Masters."

"What?"

"That."

"Whether I may tell Evan you are sorry for him?"

"Whether you may tell that to anybody."

"I don't want to tell it to but one," said Mrs. Reverdy, laughing.
"What has Mr. Masters to do with it?"

"He is my husband." And calmly as Diana said it, she felt as if she
would like to shriek out the words to the birds on the hillside--to the
angels, if there were angels in the air. Yet sh