“She will wet her feet, she will catch cold, she will get rheumatism. Oh, if she knew what it was to have neuralgia like me! But Italy!” said Mrs. Norton to herself. She went back to her little drawing-room in a flutter of excitement. Italy! It had been the pride of her life to have been at Geneva once in her early days, and in this one expedition she had found a parallel to all she had heard of wonderful and stupendous since then. “I can understand it,” she had said, “because, when I was at Geneva----” With this the greatest traveller, and even Mr. Hunstanton himself, had been quelled. But now Italy! It took away the little lady’s breath. She went in and looked at the banker’s letter. Surely it would turn into a bit of rag again in her hands. It could not be real. Italy--and a hundred pounds! Mrs. Norton was dumb. She gasped for breath: she had not composure enough to call down Sophy, blissfully occupied in looking up her ribbons, and unaware that there was anything to hear. Diana went back with a smile on her face. The power of doing such things as this is most likely sweeter when it is newly acquired than when people have possessed it all their life. She liked the indulgence. To be very rich, is it not to be in some sort a god upon earth, putting right the wrongs of fortune, and remedying its injustice? It was not so always: had she herself been ill in the old days, she must have borne it, and died in patience without hope of relief; and now to be able to forestall the first possibility of danger to another seemed very sweet to her. Yet she was not unaware, and the recollection made her smile again, that there was something absurd in the choice of Sophy Norton as the recipient of her bounty. There was many a consumptive girl in the county to whom the help would have been invaluable--but Sophy was not consumptive or unhealthy. She had a cough which was no more dangerous than a toothache, and which had only attracted the notice of her friend from the fact of the supposed dampness of the little Red House in the park. What a curious commentary it was on the inequalities of fortune, and the duty of the rich to bear the burdens of the poor! Mrs. Norton was not exactly poor: she had enough to keep a house comfortably enough, therefore it was to her that the rent-free cottage naturally fell; and Sophy had no more need of transportation to a warm climate than one of the elm-trees had, therefore of course it was Sophy who had the means thrust into her hand. What a curious travesty of need and of duty! and what could the great lady say for herself who was so glad to offer this pleasure and favour to her semi-dependants? She did nothing but smile, with an acute sense of those difficulties of life which no one can explain and scarcely any one overcome. Had Diana known the people to whom this favour would have been most a favour--to whom it might have been life and death--probably they would have been proud persons who