Diana alone in a Broadway hotel, felt a little like a person shipwrecked in mid-ocean. What was all this bustling, restless, driving multitude around her like, but the waves of the sea, to which Scripture likens them? and the roar of their tumult almost bewildered her senses. Proverbially there is no situation more lonely to the feeling than the midst of a strange crowd; and Diana, sitting at her window and looking down into the busy street, felt alone and cast adrift as she never had felt in her life before. _Her_ life seemed done, finished, as far as regarded hope or joy; nothing left but weary and dragging existence; and the eager hurrying hither and thither of the city crowd struck on her view as aimless and fruitless, and so very drear to look at? What was it all for?--seeing life was such a thing as she had found it. The wrench of coming away from Pleasant Valley had left her with a reaction of dull, stunned, and strained nerves; she was glad she had come away, glad she was no longer there; and that was the only thing she was glad of in the wide, wide world. Some degree of rest came with the quiet of those hours alone in the hotel. Basil was gone until the evening, and Diana had time to recover a little from the fatigue of the journey, and in the perfect solitude also from the overstrain of the nerves. She began to remember Basil's part in all this, and to be sensible how true and faithful and kind he was; how very unselfish, how patient with her and with pain. Diana could have wept her heart out over it, if that would have done any good; and indeed supposing that she could have shed tears at all, which she could not just then. She only felt sore and sorry for her husband; and then she took some pains with her toilet, and refreshed herself so as to look pleasant to his eyes when he came home. He came home only to a late supper. He looked somewhat weary, but his eye brightened when he saw Diana, and he came up and kissed her. "Diana--God is good," he said to her. "Yes," she answered, looking up drearily, "I believe it." "But you do not feel it yet. Well, remember, it is true, and you will feel it some day. It is all right with Aunt Sutphen." "She will let me come?" "She is glad to have you come. The old lady is very much alone. And she does me the honour to say that she expects my wife will know how to behave herself." "What does she mean by that?" said Diana, a little startled. "I don't know! Aunt Sutphen has her own notions respecting behaviour. I did not inquire, Diana; knowing that, whatever her meaning might be, it was the same thing so far as you are concerned." "Basil--you are very good!" Diana said after a pause and with a trembling lip. "I can take compliments from Aunt Sutphen," he said with a bit of his old dry humorous manner, "but from you I don't know what to do with them. Come to supper, Di; we must take the first boat for Clifton to-morrow morning, if we can, to let me get back on my way to Pleasant Valley."