Diana cast a glance at Mrs. Lowell before she replied: "I did see him, though, Mamma." The girl felt very certain that the episode could never be finished without this fact transpiring.
"You did?" Mrs. Wilbur sat up with great interest. "That explains why you have seemed to me a little sad ever since I came. You saw the poor man. How did it happen?"
"I wrote him a note and asked him if I could call. I reminded him that we were related—" She hesitated.
"Why, Diana Wilbur, I never heard of anything so extraordinary! You dear lamb, how pleased your father will be! Mrs. Lowell," she turned to that lady, "do you wonder I'm proud of this child? Do you believe that one young girl in a thousand would take the trouble to pay such an attention to an elderly relative whom she had never seen?"
Mrs. Lowell was saved from the embarrassment of replying, for Diana spoke hurriedly:
"It isn't what you think, Mamma. I went to him on an errand—some one else's errand."
Mrs. Wilbur put up her lorgnette the better to view her daughter's crimsoning cheeks and quivering lips.
"Tell me what it was, at once," she commanded. "Who dared to make use of you in such a way?"
"No one," protested the girl. "It was my own idea, but please don't ask me to tell you of it now. I have had such a shock—I am really not able to talk about it yet."
"Very well, then, I will wait." Mrs. Wilbur's dilated nostrils expressed her displeasure. "But this proves that you are, just as I have felt, too young to be wandering about on your own. I should not have allowed you to leave me." As she finished, the mother swept Mrs. Lowell with a condemning glance in which she withdrew all her previous approval of that lady.