conduct on this occasion had brought them under an evil charm. It was no superstition, certainly, to think that this young lady had lost a certain evenness of temper. She was impatient, absent-minded, indifferent, capricious. She expressed unaccountable opinions and proposed unnatural plans. It is true that disagreeable things were constantly happening to them—things which would have taxed the most unruffled spirit. Their post-horses broke down, their postilions were impertinent, their luggage went astray, their servants betrayed them. The heavens themselves seemed to join in the conspiracy, and for days together were dark and ungenerous, treating them only to wailing winds and watery clouds. It was, in a large measure, in the light of after years that Agatha judged this period, but even at the time she felt it to be depressing, uncomfortable, unnatural. Diana apparently shared this feeling, though she never openly avowed it. She took refuge in a kind of haughty silence, and whenever a new contretemps came to her knowledge, she simply greeted it with a bitter smile which Agatha always interpreted as an ironical reflection on poor, fantastic, obtrusive Mr. Longstaff, who, through some mysterious action upon the machinery of nature, had turned the tide of their fortunes. At the end of the summer, suddenly, Diana proposed they should go home, in the tone of a person who gives
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