Somehow or other this passing and temporary life of the English visitors in the foreign town had become too serious, too securely established and certain with all of them, being as it really was an affair of a few weeks or months at the utmost, and incapable of extension. Perhaps this was Diana’s fault. Arriving in March, she had no more than six or seven weeks before her, a mere temporary visit--but the temporary was uncongenial to her nature. She established herself half unconsciously, involuntarily as if she had been at home. She made her _piano nobile_ in the old palace assume a certain resemblance to herself, just as she, on the other hand, perhaps unconsciously too, perhaps with a touch of that fine vanity which disguises itself under the semblance of taste, suited herself to her dwelling-place, and put her dress and all her surroundings into conformity with it. If Diana had not had the kind of lofty beauty to which utter simplicity of toilet is becoming, probably it might not have occurred to her to leave the new dress from Paris, before which Mrs. Norton and Sophy had rendered homage, hanging in her wardrobe, and put on the old velvet gown, which, as Sophy indignantly remarked, “she had worn all last winter!” But this was what she did: though in some lights the long sweeping folds of the velvet, which was of a very dark Venetian blue, looked somewhat faded, at least in the eyes of her friends. “I never thought Diana would be like that: wearing out her old dresses, when she can afford to have as many new ones as she pleases!” Sophy cried, almost weeping at the recollections of all M. Worth’s _poufs_ and _plissés_. “It does not matter for us,” Mrs. Norton added, with serious vexation, “_we_ know her and look up to her in any dress; but among strangers!” Thus her friends were annoyed by her supposed frugality: and perhaps Diana, if her French toilet had been more becoming to her, would not have felt the necessity of conforming her dress to the style of those great rooms, so pathetically faded, so noble and worn, and independent of all meretricious decoration.