Even Valentine's preference for this happy
rival had not lessened Diana's love for her friend and benefactress. She
had been jealous of Charlotte's happier fate: but in the hour when this
jealousy was most bitter there had been no wavering in her attachment to
this one true and generous friend.
Miss Paget was very silent during the homeward drive. She understood now
what that change had been in her friend which until now had so perplexed
her. It was a decay of physical strength which had robbed Lotta's smile
of its brightness, her laugh of its merry music. It was physical languor
that made her so indifferent to the things which had once awakened her
girlish enthusiasm. The discovery was a very painful one. Diana
remembered her experience of Hyde Lodge: the girls who had grown day by
day more listless, now in the doctor's hands for a day or two, now well
again and toiling at the old treadmill round of study, now sinking into
confirmed invalids; until the bitter hour in which parents are summoned,
and the doctor urges rest, and the fond mother carries her darling home,
assured that home comfort and tenderness will, speedily restore her. Her
schoolfellows cluster round the carriage to bid her "good-bye until next
half," full of hopeful talk about her swift recovery. But when the
vacation is over, and Black Monday comes, she is not amongst the
returning scholars.
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