swered with calmness, "there are many
things that come up in the world to try one and trouble one; things one
cannot help, and that one must bear."

"I know that, as well as you do. But a woman with the husband you have
got, ought never to be petrified by anything that comes to her. In the
first place, she has no cause; and in the second place, she has no
right."

There was such an instant assent of Diana's inner nature to at least
the latter of these assertions, that after a minute or two's pause she
said very simply--

"Thank you, That is true."

"He's rather fond of you, isn't he?" the old lady asked with a
well-pleased look at her beautiful neighbour.

"Yes. Too much," said Diana, sighing.

"Can't be too much, as I see, if only you are equally fond of him; it
is bad to have inequality in that matter. But, my dear, whatever you
do, don't turn into marble. There's fire at the heart of the earth,
folks say, but it don't do us much good in winter."

With this oracular statement Mrs. Sutphen closed her lecture. She had
said enough. Diana spent half that night and all the next day in a
quite new set of meditations.

And more days than one. She waked up to see what she had been doing.
What business had she to be thinking of Evan, when she was Basil's
wife?--what right to, be even only in imagination, spending her life
with him? She knew, now that she was called to look at it, that Mrs.
Sutphen had spoken true, and that a process had been going on in
herself which might well be likened to the process of petrifying.
Everything had been losing taste and colour lately; even her baby was
not the delight she had been formerly. Her mind had been warped from
its healthy condition, and was growing morbid. Conscience roused up now
fully, and bade Diana stop short where she was and take another course.
But there she was met by a difficulty; one that many a woman has had to
meet, and that few have ever overcome. To take another course, meant
that she should cease thinking of Evan,--cease thinking of him even at
all; for it was one of those things which you cannot do _a little_. She
tried it; and she found it to be impossible. Everything and anything
would set her upon the track of thinking of him; everything led to him;
everything was bound up with him, either by sympathy or contrast. She
found that she must think of Evan, because she loved him. She said that
to herself, and pleaded it. Then do not love him! was the instant