"I have seen a beautiful woman sweeping a crossing," said Charlotte doubtfully.
"Yes, but what sort of beauty was it?—a beauty that made you shudder. Don't talk about these things, Charlotte; you only encourage me to be bitter and discontented. I daresay I ought to be very happy, when I remember that I have dinner every day, and shoes and stockings, and a bed to lie down upon at night; and I am happier, now that I work for my living, than I was in the old time, when my cousin was always grumbling about her unpaid bills. But my life is very dreary and empty; and when I look forward to the future, it seems like looking out upon some level plain that leads nowhere, but across which I must tramp on for ever and ever, until I drop down and die."
It was something in this fashion that Miss Paget talked, as she sat in the garden with Charlotte Halliday at the close of the half-year. She was going to lose her faithful friend—the girl who, so much richer, and happier, and more amiable than herself, had yet clung to her so fondly; she was going to lose this tender companion, and she was more sorry for the loss than she cared to express.
"You must come and see us very often," Charlotte said for the hundredth time; "mamma will be so glad to have you, for my sake; and my stepfather never interferes with our arrangements. O, Di, how I wish you would come and live with us altogether! Would you come, if I could manage to arrange it?"
"How could I come? What Quixotic nonsense you talk, Lotta!"
"Not at all, dear; you could come as a sort of companion for me, or a sort of companion for mamma. What does it matter how you come, if I can only have you? My life will be so dreary in that dreadful new-looking house, unless I have a companion I love. Will you come, Di?—only tell me you will come! I am sure Mr. Sheldon would not refuse, if I asked him to let you live with us. Will you come, dear?—yes or no. You would be glad to come, if you loved me."
"And I do love you, Lotta, with all my heart," answered Miss Paget, with unusual fervour; "but then the whole of my heart is not much. As to coming to live with you, of course it would be a hundred thousand times pleasanter than the life I lead here; but it is not to be supposed that Mr. Sheldon will consent to have a stranger in his house just because his impulsive stepdaughter chooses to take a fancy to a schoolfellow who isn't worthy of half her affection."
"Let me be the judge of that. As to my stepfather, I am almost sure of his consent. You don't know how indulgent he is to me; which shows what a wicked creature I must be not to like him. You shall come to us, Diana, and be my sister; and we will play and sing our pet duets together, and be as happy as two birds in a cage, or a good deal happier—for I never could quite understand the ecstatic delight of perpetual hempseed and an occasional peck at a dirty lump of sugar."
After this there came all the bustle of packing and preparation for departure, and a kind of saturnalia prevailed at Hyde Lodge—a saturnalia which terminated with the breaking-up ball: and who among the crowd of fair young dancers so bright as Charlotte Halliday, dressed in the schoolgirl's festal robes of cloud-like muslin, and with her white throat set off by a black ribbon and a gold locket?
Diana sat in a corner of the schoolroom towards the close of the evening, very weary of her share in the festival, and watched her friend, half in sadness, half in envy.