Thus Diana occupied herself through the dulness of the winter; but when spring began to thrill nature with its first touches through the gloom her energy flagged. There was no one with her. Were I to say that these two silly little women in the Red House had been “company” for Diana it would be folly; and yet she missed them and their chatter and their soft voices. How much domestic comfort there is in pleasant looks and smiles and soft tones, even when unaccompanied by high qualities! They had gone away without thinking much of her who was so much their superior, accepting her favours with light hearts, but quite easy in the thought that Diana liked to give. And she, foolish, bigger, nobler creature, missed them! How absurd it was, yet true! And she missed also the Hunstantons, her nearest neighbours, and her strength of winter flagged; and all those imaginations to which “in spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns” awoke in Diana’s mind--not to thoughts of love, but to those unnamed and unnamable disturbances, longings for something other than what we possess, which are not confined to youth alone. “Folk are longen to gon on pilgrimages,”--old characteristic of human nature never changed! Diana got up one morning with a sudden thought in her mind. She, who for these last two years had been helping all sorts of people to all sorts of pleasure, she had never been anywhere herself, except in the last months of old Lady Trelawny’s life, when she went to Cannes with her in an invalid pursuit of the warmth and sunshine. She made up her mind all at once to go to Italy too.