CHAPTER I.
"IN YOUR PATIENCE YE ARE STRONG." Miss Halliday returned to the gothic villa at Bayswater with a bloom on her cheeks, and a brightness in her eyes, which surpassed her wonted bloom and brightness, fair and bright as her beauty had been from the hour in which she was created to charm mankind.

She had been a creature to adore even in the first dawn of infancy, and in her christening-hood and toga of white satin had been a being to dream of.

But now she seemed invested all at once with a new loveliness--more spiritual, more pensive, than the old.
Might not Valentine have cried, with the rapturous pride of a lover: "Look at the woman here with the new soul!" and anon: "This new soul is mine!" It was love that had imparted a new charm to Miss Halliday's beauty.
Diana wondered at the subtle change as her friend sat in her favourite window on the morning after her return, looking dreamily out into the blossomless garden, where evergreens of the darkest and spikiest character stood up stern and straight against the cold gray sky.

Diana had welcomed her friend in her usual reserved manner, much to Charlotte's discomfiture.

The girl so yearned for a confidante.