e said it calmly.

"But do you ask your husband about everything you do or say?"

"If I think he would not like it."

"But that is giving him a great deal of power,--too much. Husband's are
fallible, as well as wives," said Mrs. Reverdy, laughing.

"Mr. Masters is not fallible. At least, I never saw him fail in
anything. If he ever made a mistake, it was when he married me."

"And you?" said Mrs. Reverdy. "Didn't you make a mistake too?"

"In marrying somebody so much too good for me--yes," Diana answered.

The little woman was a good deal baffled.

"Then have you really no kind word for Evan? must I tell him so?"

Diana felt as if her brain would have reeled in another minute. Before
she could answer, came the sound of a little wailing cry from the room
up-stairs, and she started up. That movement was sudden, but the next
were collected and slow. "You will excuse me," she said,--"I hear
baby,"--and she passed from the room like a princess. If her manner had
been less discouraging, I think Mrs. Reverdy would have still pursued
her point, and asked leave to follow her and see the baby; but Diana's
slow, languid dignity and gracious composure imposed upon the little
woman, and she gave up the game; at least for the present. When Miss
Collins, set free, hurried down, Mrs. Reverdy was gone.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

Had she no kind word for Evan? Diana felt as if her heart would snap
some one of its cords, and give over its weary beating at once and for
ever. No kind word for Evan? her beloved, her betrayed, her
life-treasure once, towards whom still all the wealth of her heart
longed to pour itself out; and she might not send him one kind word?
And he did not know that she had been true to him; and yet he had
remained true to her. Might he not know so much as that, and that her
heart was breaking as well as his? Only it would not break. All the
pain of death without its cessation of consciousness. Why not let him
have one word to know that she loved him still, and would always love
him? Truth--truth and duty--loyal faith to her husband, the man whom in
her mistake she had married. O, why could not such mistakes be undone!
But they never could, never. It was a living death that she was
condemned to die.

I cannot say that Diana really wavered at all in her truth; but this
was an hour of storm never to be remembered without shuddering. She had
her baby in her arms, but the mother's instinc