Everybody has been in Florence or will go. It is not necessary, therefore, here to describe what Clara and Diana saw under the superintendence of Miss Sullivan, instinctive discoverer of the best. They were devout beneath the dome of Brunelleschi, rapt beside the tower of Giotto, critical in the galleries, gay in the Cascine. The Florentines adored Clara, the fair. Strangers worshipped Diana, the dark. This was not Diana, pale queen of night, but the huntress deity, bold and clear of eye, of colours rich and warm, with vigorous, fiery blood, hastening, almost fevering, a living life of passionateness. An Amazonian queen was Diana, who could do the dashing deeds of an Amazon with fanciful freedom. The Actæons dreaded her. No man of feeble manhood was permitted in her presence. Soldierly men and travellers she liked, and deep-sea fishermen, and blacksmiths and architects and heroes and lyric poets. And when any of these told her of his ambitions, large as life, or the dangers he had passed, and while he told, looked in her unblenching eyes and saw through them a soul that could comprehend any great ambition, or dare any danger; he, the strong man, always loved her madly. But she, the strong woman, the master-hero of her own soul, could not find her hero. There were ideal men in history for her to adore--at least, they seemed so, as history painted them--and as she read of them, she felt that strange thrill of despair for their absence that later she knew to be the passion of love--the passion of the woman longing for the fit, appointed mate. The friendship of Clara and Diana was fore-ordained. Its historic beginning dates back to the college intimacy between young Waddie, refined, timid, studious, and Diana’s father, a bold and ardent youth of southern blood and foreign race. This gentleman, being afterward unhappy in his home, wandered away into Texas. There he acquired immense estates by the purchase of old Spanish grants, and dying early, bequeathed his only child to his friend, Mr. Waddie, for care and nurture. The two girls grew up as sisters, and it was not until Diana’s womanhood that the serious consideration of her orphanage was forced upon her. Mrs. Waddie, the kindest of mothers, was immersed in business, speculating for her husband, urging him forward to posts of responsibility he shrank from. She was therefore ready to yield her two daughters entirely into the hands of Miss Sullivan.