his venerable valet having, a couple of hours before, sought speech of her on the same subject. Diana listened, at first with a rosy flush, and then with a cold, an almost cruel, frown.
"Take pity upon him," said Agatha Gosling,—"take pity on him and go and see him."
"I don't understand," said her companion, "and it seems to me very disagreeable. What is Mr. Longstaff to me?" But before they separated, Agatha had persuaded her to say that if a message really should come from the young man's death-bed, she would not refuse him the light of her presence.
The message really came, brought of course by the invalid's zealous chamberlain. He re-appeared on the morrow, announcing that his master very humbly begged for the honor of ten minutes conversation with the two ladies. They consented to follow him, and he led the way to Mr. Longstaff's apartments. Diana still wore her cloudy brow, but it made her look terribly handsome. Under the old man's guidance they passed through a low green door in a yellow wall, across a tangled garden full of orange-trees and winter roses, and into a white-wainscoted saloon, where they were presently left alone before a great classic, Empire clock, perched upon a frigid southern chimney-piece. They waited, however, but a few moments; the door of an adjoining room opened and the Sisters of Charity,
