Everyone was in such consternation at Diana’s accident that she made efforts to recover her usual spirits and partly succeeded. Good Mrs. Wilkes must not be mortified by a calamity at her picnic. All the men who did not venture to be in love with Diana, or who loved elsewhere, liked her, and the ladies were not jealous of so unconscious a belle. She had breadths of sympathy. Miss Milly Center, Queen of the Birthday Festival, came and took Diana’s hand softly and was very sorry. And when Diana thanked her gently, poor Milly, on her gay birthday, burst into tears. In Miss Milly’s walk with Mr. Dulger, she had been very exasperating. There was no object she carried that she did not drop, and few that she did not break or tear. Poor Billy was put terribly in fault by her conduct. He could not endure it another day, and when Milly finally crashed her parasol into a bag of silk filled with comminuted whale-bone, and said, “You must have it mended to-morrow before eleven, Mr. Dulger, and bring it to me,” he resolved to make the morrow’s morn the crisis. It should end for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, his dumb thraldom. He would kick away the platform and be a dangler no more, even if he broke his neck. Courage, Billy Dulger! Mr. Belden was especially distressed at the accident. In fact, he seemed, in speaking to Clara, to assume a right to more than friendly sympathy. Clara observed, now for the first time, that singular resemblance between him and Dunstan. She saw why Diana had allowed an intimacy. Clara, studying Belden’s face, quickly and keenly, discovered that the resemblance was not a pleasant one. All her old distrust of him returned. “Please do not speak of it to-day, Mr. Belden,” she thought proper to say to him, “but you will be glad to know that Diana and your friend, Mr. Dunstan, are engaged. It is an old affair revived. It began in Texas a long time ago.” Belden, with his usual self-possession, said what was friendly and commonplace on such occasions. Clara was almost deceived. She could not hear the monosyllable he sent out with a blast, as he turned toward Mrs. De Flournoy. Admiral Mrs. Wilkes re-embarked her party for the moonlight sail. Except Diana’s accident, which that lady made light of to the happy chaperon, everything had gone on and off most prosperously. It was whispered that Titania had accepted Mr. Nicholas Bottom, the millionaire; and poor Cinderella, whom the hostess feared might be neglected, had been walking all day and picking buttercups with Mr. Oberon, the genius. So with the faint breeze of a silent night of summer, they drifted across the bay, away along the path of moonlight. Song and gay hail and answer passed from boat to boat of the flotilla. Delicious night! Happy world! Fortunate Miss Milly Center, with such a joyous birthday! Kind Mrs. Wilkes! Universal success! Huzza!