“Oh, he wouldn’t mind!” Diana assured her. “To begin with, he wouldn’t listen, and if he did, he would grin that funny little grin of his and say you were ‘over-wrought.’ That’s his great word! You can make no impression on Pa if he doesn’t want to be impressed. He has absolutely no feelings--I mean real _feelings_,--he has only just ‘impulses,’ of anger or pleasure, such as an animal has--and he doesn’t attempt to control either.” They had by this time left the drawing-room, and were standing together in a charming little bedroom, furnished all in white and rose-colour. “This is my ‘visitor’s room,’” said Sophy. ”And you can occupy it as long as you like. And I’ll bring you one of my Paris tea-gowns to slip on for dinner,--it’s lovely and you’ll look sweet!” Diana smiled. “I! Dear Sophy, you expect miracles!” But Sophy was not so far wrong. That evening, Diana, arrayed in a gracefully flowing garment of cunningly interwoven soft shades, varying from the hue of Neapolitan violets to palest turquoise, and wearing her really beautiful bright hair artistically coiled on the top of her well-shaped head, was a very different looking Diana to the weary, worn and angular woman in severely cut navy serge who had presented the appearance of an out-of-place governess but a few hours before. If she could not be called young or beautiful, she was distinctly attractive, and Sophy Lansing was delighted. “My dear, you pay for dressing!” she said, enthusiastically. “And--you mark my words!--you don’t look ‘mature’ enough for that Dr. Dimitrius!” CHAPTER VI There are certain people who take a bland and solemn pleasure in the details of death and disaster,--who are glad to assume an air of what they call “Christian resignation,” and who delight in funerals and black-edged note-paper. Regular church-goers are very frequently most particular about this last outward sign and token of the heart’s incurable sorrow; some choose a narrow black edge as being less obtrusive but more subtle,--others a broad, as emblematic of utter hopelessness. The present writer once happened on a cynical stationer, who had his own fixed ideas on this particular department of mourning which was so closely connected with his trade. “The broader the edge, the less the grief,” he assured me. “Just as I say of widows, the longer the veil, the sooner the second wedding,--and the more wreaths there are on a hearse, the fewer the friends of the deceased. That’s my experience.” But no one should accept these remarks as anything but the cynical view of a small tradesman whose opinion of his clients was somewhat embittered. A letter with a black border which was neither broad nor narrow, but discreetly medium, appeared among Sophy Lansing’s daily pile of correspondence the morning after Diana’s arrival at her flat, and, recognising the handwriting on the envelope, she at once selected it from the rest, and ran into her friend’s room, waving it aloft triumphantly.