"You have never looked at them?"
"Never."
"But why, dearest?"
"It always seemed to make papa so unhappy--anything to do with his old name. Oliver!"--she turned upon him suddenly, and for the first time she clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder--"Oliver!--I don't know what made him unhappy--I don't know why he changed his name. Sometimes I think--there may have been some terrible thing between him--and my mother."
He put his arm round her, close and tenderly.
"What makes you think that?" Then he whispered to her--"Tell your lover--your husband--tell him everything."
She shrank in delicious tremor from the great word, and it was a few moments before she could collect her thoughts. Then she said--still resting against him in the dark--and in a low rapid voice, as though she followed the visions of an inner sense:
"She died when I was only four. I just remember--it is almost my first recollection of anything--seeing her carried up-stairs--" She broke off. "And oh! it's so strange!--"
"Strange? She was ill?"
"Yes, but--what I seem to remember never explains itself--and I did not dare to ask papa. She hadn't been with us--for a long time. Papa and I had been alone. Then one day I saw them carrying her up-stairs--my father and two nurses--I ran out before my nurse could catch me--and saw her--she was in her hat and cloak. I didn't know her, and when she called me, I ran away. Then afterward they took me in to see her in bed--two or three times--and I remember once"--Diana began to sob herself--"seeing her cry. She lay sobbing--and my father beside her; he held her hand--and I saw him hide his eyes upon it. They never noticed me; I don't know that they saw me. Then they told me she was dead--I saw her lying on the bed--and my nurse gave me some flowers to put beside her--some violets. They were the only flowers. I can see her still, lying there--with her hands closed over them."