"I shall soon be back," said Diana--"very soon.

I'll just take this book to Dr.Roughsedge.You don't mind ?" The question was addressed--in a deprecatory tone--to Mrs.Colwood, who stood beside her at the Beechcote front door.
Muriel Colwood smiled, and drew the furs closer round the girl's slim throat.
"I shall mind very much if you don't stay out a full hour and get a good walk." Diana ran off, followed by her dog.

There was something in the manner both of the dog and its mistress that seemed to show impetuous escape--and relief.
"She looks tired out!" said the little companion to herself, as she turned to enter the hall.

"How on earth is she going to get through six weeks of it ?--or six months!" The house as she walked back through it made upon her the odd impression of having suddenly lost some of its charm.

The peculiar sentiment--as of a warmly human, yet delicately ordered life, which it had breathed out so freely only twenty-four hours before, seemed to her quick feeling to have been somehow obscured or dissipated.