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. All its defects,
old or new--the patches in the panelling, the darkness of the
passages--stood out.
And "all along of Eliza!" All because of Miss Fanny Merton! Mrs. Colwood
recalled the morning--Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table,
and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in
bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast,
partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting
reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run,"
on board the steamer.
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