“Don’t you see how it suits her? The mixture of hardness and of depth, and the slight tinge of vulgarity that one can’t help associating with that sort of name—and, of course, the unusualness. By the way, didn’t anyone put her down as unusual?”
Claire shook her head.
“She may be good-looking, but she’s as hard as nails, I should say—and she’s common.”
I began to feel that I should be interested to meet Mrs. Harter.
Ellison, the plumber in Cross Loman, was a decent old fellow—he died a few months ago—a very ordinary type of the tradesman class. His wife had been dead many years and I knew nothing about her. I could not remember anything about the daughter except that I had always heard her spoken of by her full name—Diamond Ellison—and that the singularity of it had remained somewhere in the background of my memory. “I should like to see her,” I said.
“You can see her if you go to the concert at the Drill Hall on the fourteenth,” Aileen Kendal told me. “She is singing.”
“She’s musical, is she?”
“I suppose so. Lady Annabel arranged it all.”
“Why is Lady Annabel having a concert at all?”
“Something to do with the Women’s Institute,” said Dolly. “You know she is always doing things for them, and she has quite worried Mumma about belonging, or letting us belong.”