"You'll stay and dine with me?" she said at last, feebly. "We'll send you home. The carriages have nothing to do. And"--she straightened herself--"you must see Oliver. He will know that you are here."
Diana said nothing. Lady Lucy rose and left the room. Diana leaned her head against the chair in which the older lady had been sitting, and covered her eyes. Her whole being was gathered into the moment of waiting.
Lady Lucy returned and beckoned. Once more Diana found herself hurrying along the ugly, interminable corridors with which she had been so familiar in the spring. The house had never seemed to her so forlorn. They paused at an open door, guarded by a screen.
"Go in, please," said Lady Lucy, making room for her to pass.
Diana entered, shaken with inward fear. She passed the screen, and there beyond it was an invalid couch--a man lying on it--and a hand held out to her.
That shrunken and wasted being the Oliver Marsham of two months before! Her heart beat against her breast. Surely she was looking at the irreparable! Her high courage wavered and sank.
But Marsham did not perceive it. He saw, as in a cloud, the lovely oval of the face, the fringed eyes, the bending form.
"Will you sit down?" he said, hoarsely.
She took a chair beside him, still holding his hand. It seemed as though she were struck dumb by what she saw. He inquired if she was at Beechcote.