After which decision Charlotte embraced her friend with enthusiasm, and departed, bearing off Mrs.Sheldon to the carriage which awaited them at the gates of Priscilla Paget's umbrageous domain.
Diana sighed as she went back to the empty schoolroom.

Even Charlotte's affection could not altogether take the sting out of dependence.

To go into a strange house amongst strange people, and to hold a place in it only on the condition of being perpetually useful and unfailingly good-tempered and agreeable, is scarcely the pleasantest prospect which this world can offer to a proud and beautiful woman.

Diana remembered her bright vision of Bohemianism in a lodging near the Strand.

It would be very delightful to ride on sufferance in Mrs.Sheldon's carriage, no doubt; but O, how much pleasanter it would have been to sit by Valentine Hawkehurst in a hansom cab spinning along the road to Greenwich or Richmond! She had promised to despatch her letter to Priscilla by that afternoon's post, and she kept her promise.