She went to Charlotte's room that night, when Mr. Sheldon's small household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love the same person, but always to love some one.
Miss Paget seated herself at Charlotte's feet, as she had done on that previous occasion. The weather was still cold enough to make a fire very pleasant, though it was more than two months since the Christmas bells had rung out upon the frosty air. Diana sat on a low hassock, playing with the tassels of her friend's dressing-gown, anxious to make her confession, and solely at a loss for words in which to shape so humiliating an avowal.
"Charlotte," she began abruptly at last, "have you any idea when you and Valentine are to be married?"
Miss Halliday gave a little cry of surprise.
"Why, of course not, Di! How can you ask such a question? Our marriage is what uncle George calls a remote contingency. We are not to be married for ages--not until Valentine has obtained a secure position in literature, and an income that seems almost impossible. That was the special condition upon which Mr. Sheldon--papa--gave his consent to our engagement. Of course it was very proper and prudent of him to think of these things; and as he has been very kind and liberal-minded in his conduct to me throughout, I should be a most ungrateful person if I refused to be guided by his advice."
"And I suppose that means that your engagement is to be a long one?"
"The longest of long engagements. And what can be happier than a long engagement? One gets to know and understand the man one is to marry so thoroughly. I think I know every turn of thought in Valentine's mind; every taste, every fancy; and I feel myself every day growing to think more and more like him. I read the books he reads, so as to be able to talk to him, you know; but I am not so clever as you, Di, and Valentine's favourite authors do sometimes seem rather dry to me. But I struggle on, you know; and the harder I find the struggle, the more I admire my dear love's cleverness. Think of him, Di--three different articles in three different magazines last month! The paper on Apollodorus, in the _Cheapside_, you know; and that story in the Charing Cross--'How I lost my Gingham Umbrella, and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' _So_ funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the _Scientific Saturday_. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine accomplishes in comparison to Homer, and the little notice the reviewers take of him, except to make him low-spirited by telling him that he is shallow and frivolous, I begin to think that literature must be going to the dogs."