Meanwhile, Diana's perceptions, stunned by the one overmastering thought, gave her no warning. And, in truth, if Marsham could have understood, the process of mental recovery was set going in her by just this freedom of utterance to the man she loved--these words and looks and tears--that brought ease after the dumb horror of the first hours.
At last he made an effort, hiding the nascent impatience in a caress.
"If I could only persuade you not to dwell upon it too persistently--to put it from your thoughts as soon and as much as you can! Dear, we shall have our own anxieties!"
She looked up with a sudden start.
"My mother," he said, reluctantly, "may give us trouble."
The color rushed into Diana's cheeks, and ebbed with equal suddenness.
"Lady Lucy! Oh!--how could I forget? Oliver!--she thinks--I am not fit!"
And in her eyes he saw for the first time the self-abasement he had dreaded, yet perhaps expected, to see there before. For in her first question to him there had been no real doubt of him; it had been the natural humility of wounded love that cries out, expecting the reply that no power on earth could check itself from giving were the case reversed.
"Dearest! you know my mother's bringing up: her Quaker training, and her rather stern ideas. We shall persuade her--in time."
"In time? And now--she--she forbids it?"