"Oh, that doesn't matter!--not at the Marshams. I am glad!" repeated Diana, fondling the book--"If I really had lost it, it would have given him a horrid advantage!"
"Who is Mr. Marsham?"
"A gentleman we got to know at Rapallo," said Diana, still smiling to herself. "He and his mother were there last winter. Father and I quarrelled with him all day long. He is the worst Radical I ever met, but--"
"But?--but agreeable?"
"Oh yes," said Diana, uncertainly, and Mrs. Colwood thought she colored--"oh yes--agreeable!"
"And he lives near here?"
"He is the member for the division. Such a crew as we shall meet there!" Diana laughed out. "I had better warn you. But they have been very kind. They called directly they knew I had taken the house. 'They' means Mr. Oliver Marsham and his mother. I am glad I've found his book!" She went off embracing it.
Mrs. Colwood was left with two impressions--one sharp, the other vague. One was that Mr. Oliver Marsham might easily become a personage in the story of which she had just, as it were, turned the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words--which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a far-off past.