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. The lodging occupied by Horatio Paget and his household consisted of four roomy chambers on the second story of a big rambling house. The rooms were meanly furnished, and decorated with the tawdry ornamentation dear to the continental mind; but there were long wide windows and an iron balcony, on which Diana Paget was often pleased to sit.
She found the sitting-room dark and empty. No dinner had been prepared; for on lucky days the Captain and his _protégé_ were wont to dine at the _table d'hôte_ of one of the hotels, or to feast sumptuously _à la carte_, while on unlucky days they did not dine at all. Diana found a roll and some cream cheese in a roomy old cupboard that was flavoured with mice; and after making a very indifferent meal in the dusky chamber, she went out upon the balcony, and sat there looking down upon the lighted town.
She had been sitting there for nearly an hour in the same attitude, when the door of the sitting-room was opened, and a footstep sounded behind her. She knew the step; and although she did not lift her head, her eyes took a new brightness in the summer dusk, and the listless grace of her attitude changed to a statuesque rigidity, though there was no change in the attitude itself.
She did not stir till a hand was laid softly on her shoulder, and a voice said,--"Diana!"
The speaker was Valentine Hawkehurst, the young man whose entrance to the golden temple had been so closely watched by Captain Paget's daughter.
She rose as he spoke, and turned to him. "You have been losing, I suppose, Mr. Hawkehurst," she said, "or you would not have come home?"