Diana had begun to feel the influence of the Italian warmth, and that sweet penetrating sunshine which is happiness enough without any more active happiness, when there is no active suffering to neutralise it. She spent the whole morning in her balcony, or close by it. The balcony was full of flowers; the sounds outside came softened through the golden warmth of the air, in which voices and sounds of wheels, and clatter of hoofs and tinkle of bells, were all fused together into a homely music. It filled her with a sense of activity and living, though she was in reality doing nothing. As she sat idly among the flowers in the balcony, raising her head now and then, with the curiosity of true do-nothingness, when some special movement, something flitting across the level of her vision, attracted her, she could not but smile at herself. But it was not a common mood with Diana; it was a summer mood, to be indulged now and then, and bringing novelty with it. Summer in the depth of her own woods was still more sweet; but this affluence of life and movement, so magically hushed, soothed, harmonised by the warm atmosphere, was new to her. She leant back in her chair and trifled with a book, and indulged the curiosities of the moment, like any foolish idler capable of nothing better. The soft air held her entranced as in an atmosphere of serene leisure and pleasantness. But it was not the afternoon languor of the lotus-eater, through which there comes a vague sadness of renunciation, a “we will return no more.” Diana had never felt her life more warmly than as she sat, with an unconscious smile, absorbing into herself all that cheerful commotion of movement, idle if you please, but in sympathy with all the life and activity which was going on about. A friendly fellowship, a sense of kindness, was in her mind. It was all new and sweet to her, this quiet amid the world of sound, this soft spectatorship of humanity. She had toiled along these common paths in her day, and therefore understood it all better than any ordinary favourite of fortune could do: and this made her enter into everything with a genial fellow-feeling which it is difficult for those who have spent all their life on the higher levels, to possess. Had any emergency happened, Diana would have been as ready to help as any busy woman in the street. But this _dolce far niente_ overcame all her usual activities, and lulled her very being. She had seen Pandolfini come in, and had waved her hand to him, not going back within doors, as he thought, but only subsiding among her flowers. After that little movement of friendly salutation she saw him go out some time after, rushing, with his head down, and without even a glance at her balcony. Was anything wrong? had anything happened? She was sympathetically disturbed for the moment; but, after all, she knew nothing of Mr. Pandolfini’s affairs, and the idea floated out of her mind. She had the