But in such a case love can do nothing except watch and wait. That night, in the course of that girlish talk in Charlotte's bedroom, which had become a habit with the two girls, Diana extorted from her friend a full account of the symptoms which had affected her within the last few weeks. "Pray don't look so anxious, dear Di," she said gaily; "it is really nothing worth talking of; and I knew that if I confessed to feeling ill you and mamma would straightway begin to worry yourselves about me. I have felt a little sick and faint sometimes; and now and then a sudden dizziness has come over me. It is nothing of any consequence, and it passes away very quickly. Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know. But what does it all amount to, except that I am nervous?" "You must have change of air, Lotta," said Diana resolutely, "and change of scene. Yes, no doubt you are nervous. You have been kept almost a prisoner in the house through Mr. Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that change, dear, wouldn't you?" "Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--" "But what, darling?" "I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I couldn't bear Newhall without him." "Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!" No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels. While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus, hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned.