"One moment," said Denzil. "Before you begin, will you tell me what you think of the couple?"
"Think!" cried Diana disdainfully. "I think they are a couple of adventurers; but she is the worst of the two. The old man, Jabez Clyne, I think moderately well of; he is a weak fool under the thumb of his daughter. If you only knew what I have suffered at the hands of that golden-haired doll!"
"I should think you could hold your own, Miss Vrain."
"Not against treachery and lies!" retorted Diana fiercely. "It is not my habit to employ such weapons, but my stepmother used no others. It was she who drove me out of the house and made me exile myself to the Antipodes to escape her falseness. And it was she," added Miss Vrain solemnly, "who treated my father so ill as to drive him out of his own home. Lydia Vrain is not the doll you think her to be; she is a false, cruel, clever adventuress, and I hate her—I hate her with all my heart and soul!"
This feminine outburst of anger rather bewildered Denzil, who saw very plainly that Diana was by no means the lofty angel he had taken her to be in the first appreciation of her beauty. But her passion of the moment suited so well with her stately looks that she seemed rather a Margaret of Anjou defying York and his faction than an injured woman concerned with so slight a thing as the rebuke of one of her own sex for whom she had little love. Diana saw the surprise expressed on Lucian's face, and her own flushed a little with annoyance that she should have betrayed her feelings so openly. With a vexed laugh, she recovered her temper and composed demeanour.
"You see I am no saint, Mr. Denzil," she said, resuming her seat, for in her anger she had risen to her feet. "But even if I were one, I could not have restrained myself from speaking as I did. When you know my stepmother as well as I do—but I must talk calmly about her, or you will not understand my reasons for thinking her concerned in the terrible fate of my poor father."
"I am all attention, Miss Vrain."
"I'll tell you all I know, as concisely as possible," she replied, "and you can judge for yourself if I am right or wrong. Three years ago my father's health was very bad. Since the death of my mother—now some ten years—he had devoted himself to hard study, and had lived more or less the life of a recluse in Berwin Manor. He was writing a history of the Elizabethan dramatists, and became so engrossed with the work that he neglected his health, and consequently there was danger that he might suffer from brain fever. The doctors ordered him to leave his books and to travel, in order that his attention might be distracted by new scenes and new people. I was to go with him, to see that he did not resume his studies, so, in an evil hour for us both, we went to Italy."
"Your father was not mad?" said Lucian, thinking of the extraordinary behaviour of Vrain in the square.