In due course the two ladies arrived, the elder very small and thin, and birdlike in her movements; the younger moderately tall, and graceful as a willow tree, with great candid brown eyes that looked fearlessly out on to the world, and a tragic mouth that belied a usually cheerful disposition, and hinted at a tendency to look on the gloomy side of life. Madam Thompson, whose first meeting with Diana this was, remarked on the sad mouth to Miss Elizabeth, or Betty as she was more often called, as they sat over the fire on the first night, Diana herself having retired to her room. Miss Betty shook her head darkly and prophesied that her precious Di would one day love some man as no man in _her_ opinion deserved to be loved! "And she'll have love badly," she said, clicking her knitting-needles energetically. "_I_ know these temperamental children!" "She looks so melancholy," ventured the widow. "Well there you are wrong!" replied Miss Betty. "'Tis the sunniest-tempered child, and the sweetest-natured in the whole wide world, bless her! But I don't deny that she can be miserable. Far from it. Why, I've known her weep her pretty eyes out over a dead puppy even! But usually she is gay enough." "I fear this house will be dull and stupid for her," said Madam Thompson regretfully. "If only my dear son George were at home to entertain her--" "My love, pray do not put yourself out! I assure you Diana will not at all object to a little quiet after the life she has been leading in town this winter with her friend's family." Whatever Diana thought of the quiet, she at least made no complaint, and adapted herself to her surroundings quite contentedly. In the morning they would all walk as far as the Assembly Rooms, and Miss Betty would drink the waters in the old Pump Room, pacing sedately up and down with her friend on one side and her niece on the other. Madam Thompson had very few acquaintances in Bath, and the people she did know were all of her own age and habits, rarely venturing as far as the crowded fashionable quarter; so Diana had to be content with the society of the two old ladies, who gossiped happily enough together, but whose conversation she could not but find singularly uninteresting. She watched the _monde_ with concealed wistfulness, seeing Beau Nash strut about among the ladies, bowing with his extreme gallantry, always impeccably garbed, and in spite of his rapidly increasing age and bulk still absolute monarch of Bath. She saw fine painted madams in enormous hoops, and with their hair so extravagantly curled and powdered that it appeared quite grotesque, mincing along with their various cavaliers; elderly beaux with coats padded to hid their shrunken shoulders, and paint to fill the wrinkles on their faces; young rakes; stout dowagers with their demure daughters; old ladies who had come to Bath for their health's sake; titled folk of fashion, and plain gentry from the country--all parading before her eyes.