She drew a long breath. Muriel looked at her tenderly--enchanted whenever the old enthusiasm, the old buoyancy reappeared. They had now been in Italy for nearly two months. Muriel knew that for her companion the time had passed in one long wrestle for a new moral and spiritual standing-ground. All the glory of Italy had passed before the girl's troubled eyes as something beautiful but incoherent, a dream landscape, on which only now and then her full consciousness laid hold. For to the intenser feeling of youth, full reality belongs only to the world within; the world where the heart loves and suffers. Diana's true life was there; and she did not even admit the loyal and gentle woman who had taken a sister's place beside her to a knowledge of its ebb and flow. She bore herself cheerfully and simply; went to picture-galleries and churches; sketched and read--making no parade either of sorrow or of endurance. But the impression on Mrs. Colwood all the time was of a desperately struggling soul voyaging strange seas of grief alone. She sometimes--though rarely--talked with Muriel of her mother's case; she would sometimes bring her friend a letter of her father's, or a fragment of journal from that full and tragic store which the solicitors had now placed in her hands; generally escaping afterward from all comment; only able to bear a look, a pressure of the hand. But, as a rule, she kept her pain out of sight. In the long dumb debate with herself she had grown thin and pale. There was nothing, however, to be done, nothing to be said. The devoted friend could only watch and wait. Meanwhile, of Oliver Marsham not a word was ever spoken between them. * * * * * The travellers climbed the hill as the sun sank behind the mountains, made for the Subasio Hotel, found letters, and ordered rooms. Among her letters, Diana opened one from Sir James Chide. "The House will be up on Thursday for the recess, and at last I have persuaded Ferrier to let me carry him off. He is looking worn out, and, as I tell him, will break down before the election unless he takes a holiday now. So he comes--protesting. We shall probably join you somewhere in Umbria--at Perugia or Assisi. If I don't find you at one or the other, I shall write to Siena, where you said you meant to be by the first week in June. And, by-the-way, I shouldn't wonder if Bobbie Forbes were with us. He amuses Ferrier, who is very fond of him. But, of course, you needn't see anything of him unless you like."