“Thank you, Grace. Mother is coming upstairs directly to lie down—will you see she has all she wants?”
“Yes, miss.” Then, after a pause, “It’s you that should lie down and get a rest, Miss Diana,—you’ve been doing ever such a lot all these days. You should just take it easy now.”
Diana smiled again. There was something of kindly compassion in the “take it easy” suggestion—but she nodded assentingly and the well-meaning maid left her.
There was a long mirror against the wall, and Diana suddenly saw her own reflection in it. A hot flush of annoyance reddened her face,—what a scarecrow she looked to herself! So angular and bony! Her plain navy linen frock hung as straight as a man’s trousers; no gracious curves of body gave prettiness to its uncompromising folds,—and as for her poor worn countenance, she could have thrown things at it for its doleful pointed chin and sharp nose! She looked steadfastly into her own eyes,—they were curious in colour, and rather pretty with their melting hues of blue and grey,—but, oh!—those crows’-feet at the corners!—oh, the wrinkling of the eyelids!—oh, the tiredness, and dimness and ache!
Turning abruptly away, she glanced at the small time-piece on her dressing-table. It was three o’clock. Then she took off her navy linen gown,—one of the “serviceable,” ugly sort of things her father was never tired of recommending for her wear,—and slipped on a plain little white wrapper which she had made for herself out of a cheap length of nun’s veiling. She loosened her hair and brushed it out,—it fell to her waist in pretty rippling waves, and it was full of golden “glints,” so much so that spiteful persons of her own sex had even said—“at her age it can’t be natural; it must be dyed!” Nevertheless, its curling tendency and its brightness were all its own, but Diana took no heed of its beauty, and she would have been more than incredulous had anyone told her that in this array, or, rather, disarray, she had the appearance of a time-worn picture of some delicate saint in a French mediæval “Book of Hours.” But such was her aspect. And with the worn saint look upon her, she drew a reclining chair to the window and lay down, stretching herself restfully at full length, and gazing out to sea, her unopened letters on her lap. How beautiful was that seemingly infinite line of shining water, melting into shining sky!—how far removed from the little troubles and terrors of the world of mankind!
“I wonder——!” she murmured. The old story again!—she was always wondering! Then, with eyes growing almost youthful in their intense longing for comprehension, she became absorbed in one of those vague reveries, which, like the things of eternity, have no beginning and no end. She “wondered”—yes!—she wondered why, for example, Nature was so grand and reasonable, and Man so mean and petty, when surely he could, if he chose, be master of his own fate,—master of all the miracles of air, fire and water, and supreme sovereign of his own soul! A passage in a book she had lately been reading recurred to her memory.
“If any man once mastered the secret of governing the chemical atoms of which he is composed, he would discover the fruit of the Tree of Life of which, as his Creator said, he would ‘take, eat and live for ever!’”
She sighed,—a sigh of weariness and momentary depression, then began turning over her letters and glancing indifferently at the handwriting on each envelope, till one, addressed in a remarkably clear, bold caligraphy, made her smile in evidently pleasurable anticipation.
“From Sophy Lansing,” she said. “Dear little Sophy! She’s always amusing, with her Suffragette enthusiasms, and her vivacious independent ways! And she’s one of those very few clever women who manage to keep womanly and charming in spite of their cleverness. Oh, what a fat letter!”
She opened it and read the dashing scrawl, still smiling.