For the first time since her “awakening” under the fiery ordeal of Dimitrius’s experiment, she experienced a painful thrill of real “feeling.”
“No—I am sorry,” she said. “I thought I should never feel sorry for anything—but I forgot and neglected this friend—and perhaps—if I had remembered, he might not have died.”
A beautiful softness and tenderness filled her eyes, and Mrs. Beresford thought she had never seen or imagined any creature half so lovely as she looked.
“We must go to Paris,” she said. “We can easily start to-morrow. I will answer this wire—and then write.”
She pencilled a brief reply:
“Deeply grieved. Will come as soon as possible.—Diana.”
—and ringing the bell, bade the servant who answered the summons take it to the telegraph office and send it off without delay.
“Yes—I am very sorry!” she said again to Mrs. Beresford—“I reproach myself for needless cruelty.”
Mrs. Beresford, mild-eyed and grey-haired, looked at her half timidly, half affectionately.
“I’m afraid, my dear, you are cruel!—just a little!” she said. “You make havoc in so many hearts!—and you do not seem to care!”