The summer had begun when Diana was able to come down-stairs again. One afternoon she was there, in her little parlour, come down for a change. The windows were open, and she sat thinking of many things. Her easy-chair had been moved down to this room; and Diana, in white, as Basil liked to see her, was lying back in it, close beside the window. June was on the hills and in the air, and in the garden; for a bunch of red roses stood in a glass on the table, and one was fastened at Diana's belt and another stuck in her beautiful hair. Not by her own hands, truly; Basil had brought in the roses a little while ago and held them to her nose, and then put one in her hair and one in her belt. Diana suffered it, all careless and unknowing of the exquisite effect, which her husband smiled at, and then went off; for his work called him. She had heard his horse's hoof-beats, going away at a gallop; and the sound carried her thoughts back, away, as a little thing will, to a time when Mr. Masters used to come to her old home to visit her mother and her, and then ride off so. Yes, and in those clays another came too; and June days were sweet then as now; and roses bloomed; and the robins were whistling then also, she remembered; did _their_ fates and life courses never change? was it all June to them, every year? How the robins whistled their answer!--"all June to them, every year!" And the smell of roses did not change, nor the colour of the light; and the fresh green of the young foliage was deep and bright and glittering to-day as ever it was. Just the same! and a human life could have all sweet scents and bright tints and glad sounds fall out of it, and not to come back! There is nothing but duty left, thought Diana; and duty with all the sap gone out of it. Duty was left a dry tree; and more, a tree so full of thorns that she could not touch it without being stung and pierced. Yet even so; to this stake of duty she was bound. Diana sat cheerlessly gazing out into the June sunlight, which laughed at her with no power to gain a smile in return; when a step came along the narrow entry, and the doorway was filled with Mrs. Starling's presence. Mother and daughter looked at each other in a peculiar way they had now; Diana's face cold, Mrs. Starling's face hard. "Well!" said the latter,--"how are you getting along?" "You see, I am down-stairs." "I see you're doing nothing." "Mr. Masters wont let me." "Humph! When _I_ had a baby four weeks old, I had my own way. And so would you, if you wanted to have it." "My husband will not let me have it." "That's fool's nonsense, Diana. If you are the girl I take you for, you can do whatever you like with your husband. No man that ever lived would make _me_ sit with my hands before me. Who's got the baby?" "Jemima." "How's Jemima to do her work and your work too? She can't do it." "No, but Mr. Masters is going to get another person to help take care of baby." "A nurse!" cried Mrs. Starling aghast.