sat, it might have been a duchess, for the beautiful unconscious ease with which she did it. Nature's high breeding; there is such a thing, and there is such an effect of it when the constitution of mind and body are alike noble. Basil poured out her cup of tea, and divided her quail, and then sat down. It was hard for her to bear. "You are too good to me," said Diana humbly. "I should like to see you prove that." "I am not sure but you are too good to everybody." "Why? how can one be too good?" "You won't get paid for it." "I think I shall," said Basil, in a quiet confident way he had, which was provoking if you were arguing with him. But Diana was not arguing with him. "Basil, _I_ can never pay you," she said, with a voice that faltered a little. "You are sure of that in your own mind?" "Very sure!" "I am a man of a hopeful turn of nature. Shall I divide that joint for you?" "My hands cannot manage a quail!" said Diana, yielding her knife and fork to him. "What can make me so weak?" "You have had fever." "But I have no fever now, and I do not seem to get my strength back." "After the unnatural tension, Nature takes her revenge." "It is very hard on you!" "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." "But, Basil,--loads of things do happen to them which _cannot_ work for their good." "Then what becomes of the Lord's promise?" "He cannot have made it, I think." "He has made it, and you and I believe it."