It was after having exhausted these liberal professions that he encountered Captain Paget.
Such was the man whom Horatio Paget admitted to companionship with his only daughter.

It can scarcely be pleaded in excuse for the Captain that he might have admitted a worse man than Valentine Hawkehurst to his family circle, for the Captain had never taken the trouble to sound the depths of his coadjutor's nature.

There is nothing so short-sighted as selfishness; and beyond the narrow circle immediately surrounding himself, there was no man more blind than Horatio Paget.
* * * * * It was dusk when Diana grew tired of the lonely pathways among the hills, where the harmonies of a band stationed in the valley were wafted in gusts of music by the fitful summer breeze.

The loneliness of the place soothed the girl's feverish spirits; and, seated in a little classic temple upon the summit of a hill, she looked pensively downward through the purple mists at the newly-lighted lamps twinkling faintly in the valley.
"One does not feel the sting of one's shabbiness here," thought Miss Paget: "the trees are all dressed alike.

Nature makes no distinction.
It is only Fortune who treats her children unfairly." The Captain's daughter walked slowly back to the little town in the deepening dusk.