Mr. Waddie went over with Diana. She found a mother with the saddened relics of a feeble beauty. Married hastily, out of silly school, she had been ignorantly, in her husband’s absence, bewildered in the toils of a great villainy, which death to the villain and madness to the victim had sufficiently avenged. Rejecting Mr. Waddie’s kind offer of escort, Diana took her mother to their estates in the up-country of Texas. In that most beautiful region, the Amazon could carry out her huntress fancies. She could gallop with her Mexican master of the horse over vast reaches of prairie, all her own. She could encamp in those belts of timber that sweep like rivers across boundless plains of Western wildness. At noon, when the deer she chased were hid in forest court, she, too, could seek such sylvan shelter, and lying there beneath an oak, all grey with mossy drapery, could take delight of dreamy contrast, and, with closed eyes, narrow her horizon with remembered palaces and rebuild under broad blue heavens the wonderful domes of Italy. Then she would study in some shady pool of the forest her face nut-browned to warm and healthy hues and fancy Clara, more palely beautiful, suddenly appearing, like Una from the ancient grove, and standing beside her at this softening mirror, as they had often stood in loving sisterhood before. In this existence, free and fresh, she learnt what so few women ever know, the pure physical joy of living. The Texas postmaster was puzzled with strange stamps on Diana’s constant letters from Europe; she was as constant in her replies. At last, she had sadly to tell her friend how her mother, after a sudden and fearful access of madness, had died. If there were any circumstances accompanying this death that made it doubly painful, and if, far away from the civilisation of towns, she had made other friends from whom this death was the cause of bitter parting, of this she said nothing to Clara. There are some secrets which honourable women do not impart to anyone more distant from their hearts than God. As to Endymion, it was certainly not probable that she had found him among Santa Fé traders, or Dutch emigrants, or rude cattle drovers whose best hope was a week of debauch in San Antonio. She rejoined the Waddies and they did Europe. Mankind stared, and jealous women scoffed wherever Clara and Diana, charming pair, were seen. Diana was in mourning and very sad--sadder than seemed wholly natural for her mother’s relieving death. The only gentleman to whom she allowed any intimacy was Belden. She told Miss Sullivan that she distrusted him and was displeased with the little she heard of his deeds, but that he was a bad imitation of an old friend of hers and she liked to be reminded of a favourite, even by a poor copy. I think upon this there must have been some very close confidence between these ladies; there certainly was a long interview, with tearfulness.