Diana felt as if her brain would have reeled in another minute. Before she could answer, came the sound of a little wailing cry from the room up-stairs, and she started up. That movement was sudden, but the next were collected and slow. "You will excuse me," she said,--"I hear baby,"--and she passed from the room like a princess. If her manner had been less discouraging, I think Mrs. Reverdy would have still pursued her point, and asked leave to follow her and see the baby; but Diana's slow, languid dignity and gracious composure imposed upon the little woman, and she gave up the game; at least for the present. When Miss Collins, set free, hurried down, Mrs. Reverdy was gone. CHAPTER XXIX. HUSBAND AND WIFE. Had she no kind word for Evan? Diana felt as if her heart would snap some one of its cords, and give over its weary beating at once and for ever. No kind word for Evan? her beloved, her betrayed, her life-treasure once, towards whom still all the wealth of her heart longed to pour itself out; and she might not send him one kind word? And he did not know that she had been true to him; and yet he had remained true to her. Might he not know so much as that, and that her heart was breaking as well as his? Only it would not break. All the pain of death without its cessation of consciousness. Why not let him have one word to know that she loved him still, and would always love him? Truth--truth and duty--loyal faith to her husband, the man whom in her mistake she had married. O, why could not such mistakes be undone! But they never could, never. It was a living death that she was condemned to die. I cannot say that Diana really wavered at all in her truth; but this was an hour of storm never to be remembered without shuddering. She had her baby in her arms, but the mother's instincts were for the time swallowed up in the stormier passions of the woman. She cared for it and ministered to it, tenderly as ever, yet in a mechanical, automatic sort of way, taking no comfort and finding no relief in her sweet duty. It was the roar of the storm and the howling of temptation which overwhelmed every other voice in her heart. Then there were practical questions to be met. Mrs. Reverdy and her family at Elmfield, who could guarantee that Evan would not get a furlough and come there too? Mrs. Reverdy's words seemed to have some ultimate design, which they had not indeed declared; they had the air of somewhat different from mere aimless rattle or mischievous gossip. Suppose Evan were to come? What then?