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Longstaff's Marriage
95


tures. The broken charm had removed itself; the heavens smiled upon them and their postilions treated them like princesses. Diana, too, had completely recovered her native placidity; she was the gentlest, the most docile, the most reasonable of women. She was silent and subdued as was natural in an invalid, though in one important particular her demeanor was certainly at variance with the idea of debility. She relished movement much more than rest, and constant change of place became the law of her days. She wished to see all the places that she had not seen before, and all the old ones over again.

"If I am really dying," she said, smiling softly. "I must leave my farewell cards everywhere." So she lived in a great open carriage, leaning back in it and looking, right and left, at everything she passed. On her former journey to Europe she had seen but little of England, and now she would visit the whole of this famous island. So she rolled for weeks through the beautiful English landscape, past meadows and hedge-rows, over the avenues of great estates and under the walls of castles and abbeys. For the English parks and manors, the "Halls" and "Courts," she had an especial admiration, and into the grounds of such as were open to appreciative tourists she made a point of penetrating. Here she stayed her carriage beneath the oaks and beeches,