Sheldon's punctilious nonsense. You
miss our brisk morning walks in the Gardens, I dare say. If you were to
go to Yorkshire, now, to your friends at Newhall, you would like that
change, dear, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I should dearly like to see Aunt Dorothy and uncle Joe; but--"
"But what, darling?"
"I should scarcely like being at Newhall, unless--you'll think me very
foolish, Di--unless Valentine was with me. We were so happy there, you
see, dear; and it was there he first told me he loved me. No, Di, I
couldn't bear Newhall without him."
"Poor Aunt Dorothy, poor uncle Joe! feathers when weighed in the scale
against a young man whom their niece has known less than a twelvemonth!"
No more was said about Charlotte's illness; Diana was too prudent to
alarm her friend by any expression of uneasiness. She adopted a cheering
tone, and the conversation drifted into other channels.
While Diana's concern for her friend's altered health was yet a new
feeling, she found herself called upon to attend her father once more
in the character of a ministering angel. And this time Captain Paget's
illness was something more than gout. It was, according to his
doctors--he had on this occasion two medical attendants--a general
breaking up of the system. The poor old wanderer,--the weary Odysseus,
hero of so many trickeries, such varied adventures,--laid himself down to
rest, within view of the Promised Land for which his soul yearned.
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