The peculiar eagerness in the tone struck Diana. She returned the kiss, a little wistfully.
"Were you so anxious about me? Wasn't it--rather plain?"
Mrs. Colwood laughed.
"Sit down there, and tell me all about it."
She pushed Diana into a chair and sat down at her feet. Diana, with some difficulty, her hand over her eyes, told all that could be told of a moment the heart of which no true lover betrays. Muriel Colwood listened with her face against the girl's dress, sometimes pressing her lips to the hand beside her.
"Is he going to see Lady Lucy to-morrow?" she asked, when Diana paused.
"Yes. He goes up by the first train."
Both were silent awhile. Diana, in the midst of all the natural flutter of blood and pulse, was conscious of a strong yearning to tell her friend more--to say: "And he has brought me comfort and courage--as well as love! I shall dare now to look into the past--to take up my father's burden. If it hurts, Oliver will help me."
But she had been brought up in a school of reticence, and her loyalty to her father and mother sealed her lips. That anxiety, that burden, nobody must share with her but Oliver--and perhaps his mother; his mother, so soon to be hers.
Muriel Colwood, watching her face, could hardly restrain herself. But the moment for which her whole being was waiting in a tension scarcely to be borne had not yet come. She chastened and rebuked her own dread.