To discover a new world is all very well for people like Columbus, who want to find one. But to discover a new world by mistake when quite content with the old one, and to be swept towards it uncertain of your reception by the natives assembling on the beach, is another thing altogether. For the second time in her life Di was frightened. "Then all these horrible feelings are being in love," she said to herself, with a sense of stupefaction. "This is what other people have felt for me, and I treated it as of little consequence. This is what I have read about, and sung about, and always rather wished to feel. I am in love with John. Oh, I hope to God he will never find it out!" Probably no man will ever understand the agonies of humiliation, of furious unreasoning antagonism, which a proud woman goes through when she becomes aware that she is falling in love. Pride and love go as ill together in the beginning as they go exceeding well together later on. To be loved is incense at first, until the sense of justice--fortunately rare in women--is aroused. "Shall I take all, and give nothing?" Pride, often a very tender pride for the lover himself, asks that question. Directly it is asked the battle begins. "I will not give less than all. How _can_ I give all?" The very young are spared the conflict, because the future husband is regarded only as the favoured ball-partner, the perpetual admirer of a new existence. But women who know something of life--of the great demands of marriage--of the absolute sacrifice of individual existence which it involves--when they begin to tremble beneath the sway of a deep human passion suffer much, fear greatly until the perfect love comes that casts out fear. Some natures, and very lovable they are, give all, counting not the cost. Others, a very few, count the cost and then give all. Di was one of these. CHAPTER XIV. "Austerity in women is sometimes the accompaniment of a rare power of loving. And when it is so their attachment is strong as death; their fidelity as resisting as the diamond."--AMIEL. The newspapers arrived at tea-time at Garstone. Every afternoon Mrs. Garstone and Mrs. Courtenay drove out along the straight high-road to D---- to fetch the papers and post the letters; four miles in and four miles out; the grey pair one day and the bays the next, in the old yellow chariot. It was the rule of the house. And after tea and rusks, and a poached egg under a cover for Mr. Garstone, that gentleman read the papers aloud in a voice that trembled and halted like the spinnet in the southern parlour. "Is Parliament prorogued yet?" Mrs. Garstone asked regularly every afternoon.