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92 up a hopeless struggle. Agatha assented, and the two ladies returned to America, much to the relief of Miss Gosling, who had an uncomfortable sense that there was something unexpressed and unregulated between them, which gave their conversation a resemblance to a sultry morning. But at home they separated very tenderly, for Agatha had to go and devote herself to her nearer kinsfolk in the country. These good people after her long absence were exacting, so that for two years she saw nothing of her late companion.

She often, however, heard from her, and Diana figured in the town gossip that was occasionally wafted to her rural home. She sometimes figured strangely—as a rattling coquette, who carried on flirtations by the hundred and broke hearts by the dozen. This had not been Diana's former character and Agatha found matter for meditation in the change. But the young lady's own letters said little of her admirers and displayed no trophies. They came very fitfully—sometimes at the rate of a dozen a month and sometimes not at all; but they were usually of a serious and abstract cast and contained the author's opinions upon life, death, religion and immortality. Mistress of her actions and of a pretty fortune, it might have been expected that news would come in trustworthy form of Diana's at last accepting one of her rumored lovers.