“I!”---- Diana did not say any more. Yes; she was too proud. It was not like a woman to be so determined, so immovable: and yet a woman whose colour went and came, whose eyes filled so quickly, who was so sensitive and easily moved, could she be hard? Mrs. Hunstanton did not quite know what she wished. She was a little proud of Diana--among all the girls who married, the one unmarrying woman, placed upon a pedestal, a virgin princess dispensing good things to all, and above the common weaknesses. One such, once in a way, pleased her imagination and her _esprit de corps_. And if Diana had willingly stepped down from her pedestal, a sense of humiliation would have filled her friend’s mind. But then poor Pandolfini! She was quick of wit and quick of speech, and would have been as ready as anybody to turn upon him, and ask who was he that he should have the Una, the peerless woman, he a penniless foreigner with nothing but a fine name? Probably had Diana melted, all this wilful lady’s impatient soul would have risen indignant at the idea of the English lady of the manor consenting to turn herself into a Madame Pandolfini. But all the same, as Diana had no such intention, her heart melted over the hopeless lover. Poor fellow! how good he was, how kind, how friendly! It was hard that by a mere accident, so to speak, because Diana had taken it into her head so suddenly to come here, that his whole life should be ruined for him. How hard it was that such things should be! As Mrs. Hunstanton went upstairs to her own floor she could not help remembering with some virulence that it was that absurd little Sophy’s sham cough which had brought Diana here, and done all the mischief. Little ridiculous creature, whom Diana would spoil so, and raise altogether out of her sphere! Mrs. Hunstanton was quite sure that it was entirely Sophy’s fault (and her aunt’s: the aunt was on the whole, being older, more ridiculous and more to be blamed than Sophy) that this misfortune had happened; though after all, she added to herself, how could Pandolfini expect that Diana was to be kept out of Italy, and shut up, so to speak, in England on his account, lest he should come to harm? That was out of the question too. Thus it will be seen the argument on her side was inconsistent, and indeed contradictory, as most such arguments must always be.