The first letter told her that her father had "tided over _that_ business, and was in better feather than before the burst-up at the Hotel d'Orange." The letter was dated from Paris, but gave no information as to the present arrangements or future plans of the writer and his companion.

Another letter, dated from the same place, but not from the same address, came to her six months afterwards, and anon another; and it was such a wonderful thing for Captain Paget to inhabit the same city for twelve months together, that Diana began to cherish faint hopes of some amendment in the scheme of her father's life and of Valentine's, since any improvement in her father's position would involve an improvement in that of his _protege_.
Miss Paget's regard for her father was by no means an absorbing affection.

The Captain had never cared to conceal his indifference for his only child, or pretended to think her anything but a nuisance and an encumbrance--a superfluous piece of luggage more difficult to dispose of than any other luggage, and altogether a stumbling-block in the stony path of a man who has to live by his wits.

So perhaps it is scarcely strange that Diana did not think of her absent father with any passionate tenderness or sad yearning love.

She thought of him very often; but her thoughts of him were painful and bitter.