One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive
for some minutes, asked him, "If his plans were yet unchanged."
"Unchanged and unchangeable," was the reply. And he proceeded
to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively
fixed for the ensuing year.
"And Rosamond Oliver?" suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape
her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than
she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a
book in his hand -- it was his unsocial custom to read at meals --
he closed it, and looked up,
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