“My love, pray do not put yourself out! I assure you Diana will not at all object to a little quiet after the life she has been leading in town this winter with her friend’s family.”

Whatever Diana thought of the quiet, she at least made no complaint, and adapted herself to her surroundings quite contentedly.

In the morning they would all walk as far as the Assembly Rooms, and Miss Betty would drink the waters in the old Pump Room, pacing sedately up and down with her friend on one side and her niece on the other. Madam Thompson had very few acquaintances in Bath, and the people she did know were all of her own age and habits, rarely venturing as far as the crowded fashionable quarter; so Diana had to be content with the society of the two old ladies, who gossiped happily enough together, but whose conversation she could not but find singularly uninteresting.