"What?"
Diana did not answer. She had spoken that last word with almost a break in her voice; she gave her attention now diligently to picking the quail bones. But when her supper was done, and the tray delivered over to Miss Collins, Basil did not, as sometimes he did, go away and leave her, but sat down again and trimmed the fire. Diana lay back in her chair, looking at him.
"Basil," she said at last after a long silence,—"do you think mistakes, I mean life-mistakes, can ever be mended in this world?"
"You must define what you mean by mistakes," he said without looking at her. "There are no mistakes, love, but those which we make by our own fault."
"O but yes there are, Basil!"
"Not what I mean by mistakes."
"Then what do you call them? When people's lives are all spoiled by something they have had nothing to do with—by death, or sickness, or accident, or misfortune."
"I call it," said Basil slowly, and still without looking at her,—"I call it, when it touches me or you, or other of the Lord's children,—God's good hand."
"O no, Basil! people's wickedness cannot be his hand."
"People's wickedness is their own. And other evil I believe is wrought by the prince of this world. But God will use people's wickedness, and even Satan's mischief, to his children's best good; and so it becomes, in so far, his blessed hand. Don't you know he has promised, 'There shall no evil happen to the just'? And that 'all things shall work together for good to them that love God?' His promise does not fail, my child."