Mrs. Starling went up-stairs at this point to see the baby, and Diana sat looking out of the window with her thoughts in a wild confusion of pain. Pain and fright, I might say. And yet her senses took the most delicate notice of all there was in the world outside to attract them. Could it be June, once so fair and laughing, that smote her now with such blows of memory's hammer? or was it Memory using June? She saw the bright glisten of the leaves upon the hillside, the rich growth of the grass, the fair beams of the summer sun; she noticed minutely the stage of development which the chestnut blossoms had reached; one or two dandelion heads; a robin redbreast that was making himself exceedingly at home on the little spread of greensward behind the house. I don't know if Diana's senses were trying to cheat her heart; but from one item to another her eye went and her mind followed, in a maze of pain that was not cheated at all, till she heard her mother's steps forsake the house. Then Diana's head sank. And then, even at the moment, as if the robin's whistle had brought them, the words came to her--"Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." An absolute promise of the Lord to his people. Could it be true, when trouble was beyond deliverance? And then came Basil's faith to her help; she knew how he believed every word, no matter how difficult or impossible; and Diana fell on her knees and hid her face, and fled to the one only last refuge of earth's despairing children. How even God could deliver her, Diana did not see, for the ground seemed giving away beneath her feet; but it is the man who cannot swim who clutches the rope for life and death; and it is when we are hopeless of our own strength that we throw ourselves utterly upon the one hand that is strong. Diana was conscious of little else but of doing that; to form a connected prayer was beyond her; she rather held up the promise, as it were with both hands, and pleaded it mutely and with the intensity of one hovering between life and death. The house was still, she feared no disturbance; and she remained motionless, without change of posture either of mind or body, for some length of time. Gradually the "I will deliver thee"--"I will deliver thee"--began to emphasize itself to her consciousness, like a whisper in the storm, and Diana burst into a terrible flood of tears. That touch of divine sympathy broke her heart. She sobbed for minutes, only keeping her sobs too noiseless to reach and alarm Miss Collins' ears; till her agony was softened and changed at last into something more like a child's exhausted and humble tears, while her breast rose and fell so, pitifully. With that came also a vague floating thought or two. "My duty--I'll do my duty--I'll do my duty."