"You are very right!" she said. "We women make a great mistake in dissociating happiness and contentment. There is too much struggle in many of our lives, and too little peace. Frances, for instance! Her life is one restless race after something that is unattainable!"
"But Lady Frances is happy! She likes struggling!"
Lady Diana smiled.
"She thinks she does. But the truly contented woman does not need to persuade herself that she is satisfied. Happiness is a fact, not an attainment." With a quiet, kindly movement she turned aside and picked up two photographs that stood upon a side-table.
"Mrs. Milbanke, this is the happiness that comes—and stays. The happiness that needs no expounding." She held out the photographs.
Clodagh took them and looked at them. One was the picture of her host; the other the photograph of three plain-looking, honest-eyed boys, who each possessed in an almost ridiculous degree their mother's outline of feature. She looked at them intently for a long time; then she handed them back.
"Thank you!" she said almost inaudibly. Then, moved by a sudden thought, she looked up into Lady Diana's face.
"Lady Diana," she said, "I want you to like my little sister! Will you like her? I don't want her to be one of the struggling women——" Then she paused suddenly, as the drawing-room door opened and Lady Frances Hope entered, followed by her brother-in-law.
At the sound of the opening door, Lady Diana gave her a quick smile of sympathy and understanding; and turned to greet the new-comers.
"What, Frances!" she exclaimed laughingly, as she caught sight of her sister's face. "Has George been beating you?"