India, and she had to part from him, he had sworn fidelity, and with many protestations of utmost tenderness had told her that “as soon as cash would allow,” he would send for her to join him, and marry her out there,--and for this happy consummation she had waited, lovingly and loyally, seven years. Meanwhile his letters grew shorter and fewer,--till at last, when his father died and he came into a large fortune, he struck the final blow on the patient life that had been sacrificed to his humour. He wrote a last letter, telling her he was married,--and so everything of hope and promise fell away from her like the falling leaves of a withering flower, though her friend, Sophy Lansing, in hot indignation at the callous way in which she had been treated, advised her to “take on another man at once.” But poor Diana could not do this. Hers was a loyal and tender spirit,--she was unable to transfer her affections from one to another _au grand galop_. She thought of it all now in a half amused way, as she sat in her easy chair by the sparkling fire, in the charming room which she could for the present call her own, surrounded by every comfort and luxury, and she looked at her ringless hand,--that small, daintily-shaped hand, on which for so many wasted years her lover’s engagement ring had sparkled as a sign of constancy. Poor little hand!--it was shown off with effect at the moment, lying with a passive prettiness on the roseate silk of her “boudoir wrap”--as white as the white fur which just peeped beneath the palm. Suddenly she clenched it. “I should like to punish him!” she said. “It may be small--it may be spiteful--but it is human! I should like to see him suffer for his treachery! I should have no pity on him or his fat wife!” Here she laughed at herself. “How absurd I am!” she went on--“making ‘much ado about nothing!’ The fat wife herself is a punishment for him, I’m sure! He’s rich, and has a big house in Mayfair and five very ugly children,--_that_ ought to be enough for him! I saw his wife by chance at a bazaar quite lately--like a moving jelly!--rather like poor mother in the fit of her clothes,--and smiling the ghastly smile of that placid, ineffable content which marks the fool! If I could do nothing else I’d like to disturb that smug, self-satisfied constitution of oozing oil!--yes, I would!--and who knows if I mayn’t do it yet!”