"
"You had better address the message to me at Rancy's, Covent Garden; the
house where the Ragamuffins have their rooms, you know, dear. That is a
more central point than my lodgings, and nearer the terminus. I will call
there two or three times in the course of the day."
"You may trust my vigilance, Valentine. I did not think it was in my
nature to love any one as I love Charlotte Halliday."
Gustave Lenoble's letters lying unanswered in her desk asserted the
all-absorbing nature of Diana's affection for the fading girl. She _was_
fading. The consciousness of this made all other love sacrilege, as it
seemed to Diana. She sat up late that night to answer Gustave's last
letter of piteous complaint.
"She had forgotten him. Ah, that he had been foolish--insensate--to
confide himself in her love! Was he not old and grey in comparison to
such youth--such freshness--a venerable dotard of thirty-five? What had
he with dreams of love and marriage? Fie, then. He humiliated himself in
the dust beneath her _mignon_ feet. He invited her to crush him with
those cruel feet. But if she did not answer his letters, he would come to
Harold's Hill. He would mock himself of that ferocious Sheldon--of a
battalion of Sheldons still more ferocious--of all the world, at
last--to be near her."
"Believe me, dear Gustave, I do not forget," wrote Diana, in reply to
these serio-comic remonstrances.
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