"Allow it?" said Lady Lucy, vaguely--"allow it?"
She fell into her chair, and Diana looked down upon her, hanging on the next word.
Lady Lucy made various movements as though to speak, which came to nothing.
"I have no one--but him," she said at last, with pathetic irrelevance. "No one. Isabel--"
Her voice failed her. Diana held out her hands, the tears running down her cheeks. "Dear Lady Lucy, let me! I am yours--and Oliver's."
"It will, perhaps, be only a few weeks--or months--and then he will be taken from us."
"But give me the right to those weeks. You wouldn't--you wouldn't separate us now!"
Lady Lucy suddenly broke down. Diana clung to her with tears, and in that hour she became as a daughter to the woman who had sentenced her youth. Lady Lucy asked no pardon in words, to Diana's infinite relief; but the surrender of weakness and sorrow was complete. "Sir James will forbid it," she said at last, when she had recovered her calm.
"No one shall forbid it!" said Diana, rising with a smile. "Now, may I answer some of those letters for you?"