It was to Miss Sullivan that the task fell of telling Diana the sad history of her father and her mother, and how the mother, after a life worse than death, was now in a madhouse. It was a terrible revelation for this pure and brave young girl. In an agony of tears, she threw herself into Miss Sullivan’s arms and prayed her to be a mother to the orphan. Miss Sullivan must have been of a nature singularly sympathetic, or herself have felt the loneliness of bitter grief, so deeply did she know the only consolations--endurance, and long-suffering faith, and hope in other lives, eternal ones. Clara was present at this interview, and, after this, the relations between the elder and the younger women were closely sisterly. The elder sister, hardly older in appearance, except of paler and more thoughtful beauty, formed the younger minds. Clara Waddie had inherited all her father’s grace and refinement of face, form, mien, manner, and thought, and withal had gained from her mother judgment and strength of character, which underlay without diminishing her delicate sweetness. You might have known this fair young person for months and have given only a mental assent to her reputation of exquisite beauty; but one day, when some changing charm of emotion cast an evanescent flush upon her cheek and your sudden inspiration of eloquence had roused a look of interest in her lambent listening eyes, you would become conscious of more than mental assent to her unclaimed claim of perfect loveliness; your soul itself would thenceforth be cognisant of her beauty. At the end of that delightful year in Florence, now rich with memories of the art and poetry of Italy, Diana was suddenly summoned to America. A most favourable change had come over her mother’s malady, and with sanity returning, she was praying for kindly companionship and love. Her life, at best, was to be but brief, but it was thought that a residence in the dry, elevated regions of the interior might prolong it and allay the pangs of her desperate disease. Diana did not hesitate; she saw her duty clearly and accepted it, rejoicing.