“Oh Diana, how I wonder at you! It is you who are doing poor Pandolfini wrong. He think of that little doll! He trusted his cause to Tom, thinking, perhaps, there was no need to name the name--as, indeed, there was not to any one with eyes in his head: and Tom like a fool, Tom like a busybody--oh, heaven forgive me! I don’t mean to say any ill of my husband, but that is how he has behaved,--Tom has gone and pledged this poor man’s life to somebody he can never care for, somebody quite unworthy of him. Diana, you may be cool about it; but I think it will break my heart.” “But you have no evidence of this,” cried Diana, in consternation. She looked at the smiling Sophy, all pink with blushes and beaming with smiles as she received everybody’s congratulations, and at Mrs. Norton, important and stately as became the aunt of a bride-elect. The incongruity between this little fluttering pair and the grave and dignified Pandolfini was striking enough, but to imagine their easy commonplaceness entangled in such a tragical complication of mistake and misery and inevitable suffering, seemed beyond the reach of ordinary imagination. Diana turned quickly to her friend, who, half hidden behind, regarded the scene with a face full of anxiety and distress. Mrs. Hunstanton’s puckered brows, her eyes in which the tears seemed ready to start, her paleness and trembling, were almost as great a visible contrast to the complacent happiness of the Nortons as was Pandolfini to the girl who was going to be his wife. “Mrs. Hunstanton,” said Diana, in a low tone, “this is the wildest fancy. It is not possible. You can have no proof of it. Mr. Hunstanton is--is----he is the kindest of men. He would not hurt a fly. How could he do such a thing, and make his friend unhappy? No, no; I cannot believe it. It is you and not he who have been mistaken.”