y, whether other people want you?"

"Insomuch as the 'other people' are more in numbers and far more needy
in condition."

"Want you more"--said Diana wistfully.

"That is the plain English of it."

"And will you go?"

"What do you counsel?"

"I do not know the people"--said Diana, breathless.

"Nor I, as yet. The church that calls me is itself a rich little
church, which has been accustomed, I am afraid, for some time, to a
dead level in religion."

"They must want you then, badly," said Diana. "That was how Pleasant
Valley was five years ago."

"But round the church lies on every hand the mill population, for whom
hardly any one cares. They need not one man, but many. Nothing is done
for them. They are almost heathen, in the midst of a land called
Christian."

"Then you will go?" said Diana, looking at Mr. Masters, and wishing
that he would speak to her with a different expression of face. It was
calm, sweet, and high, as always; but she knew he thought his wife was
lost to him for ever. "And yet, I told him, last night!" she said to
herself. Really, she was thinking more of that than of this other
subject Basil had unfolded to her.

"I do not know," he answered. "How would you like to run over there
with me and take a look at the place? I have a very friendly invitation
to come and bring you,--for the very purpose."

"Run over? Why, it must be more than one day's journey?"

"One runs by railway," said Basil simply. "What do you think? Will you
go?"

"O yes, indeed! if you will let me. And Rosy?"

"We will go nowhere without Rosy."

Diana made her cake like one in a dream.

CHAPTER XXXV.

BABYLON.

The journey to Mainbridge, the manufacturing town in question, took
place within a few days. With eager cordiality the minister and his
family were welcomed in the house of one of the chief men of the church
and of the place, and made very much at home. It was a phasis of social
life which Diana had hardly touched ever before. Wealth was abounding
and superabounding; the house was large, the luxury of furnishing and
fitting, of service and equipage, was on a scale she had never seen.
Basil was amused to observe that she did not seem to see it now; she
took it as a matter of course, and fitted in these new surroundings as
though her life had been lived in them. The dress of the minister's
wife was very plain, certainly; her muslins were not costly, and they
were simply made; yet nobody