Miss Merton descended. There was just time for Marsham to notice an extravagant hat, smothered in ostrich feathers, a large-featured, rather handsome face, framed in a tangled mass of black hair, a pair of sharp eyes that seemed to take in hungrily all they saw--the old hall, the butler, and himself, as he stood in the shadow. He heard the new guest speak to the butler about her luggage. Then the door of the inner hall opened, and he caught Diana's hurrying feet, and her cry--
"Fanny!"
He passed the lady and escaped. As he rode away into the darkness of the lanes he was conscious of an impression which had for the moment checked the happy flutter of blood and pulse. Was that the long-expected cousin? Poor Diana! A common-looking, vulgar young woman--with a most unpleasant voice and accent. An unpleasant manner, too, to the servants--half arrogant, half familiar. What a hat!--and what a fringe!--worthy of some young "lidy" in the Old Kent Road! The thought of Diana sitting at table with such a person on equal terms pricked him with annoyance; for he had all his mother's fastidiousness, though it showed itself in different forms. He blamed Mrs. Colwood--Diana ought to have been more cautiously guided. The thought of all the tender preparation made for the girl was both amusing and repellent.
Miss Merton, he understood, was Diana's cousin on the mother's side--the daughter of her mother's sister. A swarm of questions suddenly arose in his mind--questions not hitherto entertained. Had there been, in fact, a mésalliance--some disagreeable story--which accounted, perhaps, for the self-banishment of Mr. Mallory?--the seclusion in which Diana had been brought up? The idea was most unwelcome, but the sight of Fanny Merton had inevitably provoked it. And it led on to a good many other ideas and speculations of a mingled sort connected, now with Diana, now with recollections, pleasant and unpleasant, of the eight or ten years which had preceded his first sight of her.
For Oliver Marsham was now thirty-six, and he had not reached that age without at least one serious attempt--quite apart from any passages with Alicia Drake--to provide himself with a wife. Some two years before this date he had proposed to a pretty girl of great family and no money, with whom he supposed himself ardently in love. She, after some hesitation, had refused him, and Marsham had had some reason to believe that in spite of his mother's great fortune and his own expectations, his provenance had not been regarded as sufficiently aristocratic by the girl's fond parents. Perhaps had he--and not Lady Lucy--been the owner of Tallyn and its £18,000 a year, things might have been different. As it was, Marsham had felt the affront, as a strong and self-confident man was likely to feel it; and it was perhaps in reaction from it that he had allowed himself those passages with Alicia Drake which had, at least, soothed his self-love.
In this affair Marsham had acted on one of the convictions with which he had entered public life--that there is no greater help to a politician than a distinguished, clever, and, if possible, beautiful wife. Distinction, Radical though he was, had once seemed to him a matter of family and "connection." But after the failure of his first attempt, "family," in the ordinary sense, had ceased to attract him. Personal breeding, intelligence, and charm--these, after all, are what the politician who is already provided with money, wants to secure in his wife; without, of course, any obvious disqualification in the way of family history. Diana, as he had first met her among the woods at Portofino, side by side with her dignified and gentlemanly father, had made upon him precisely that impression of personal distinction of which he was in search--upon his mother also.
The appearance and the accent, however, of the cousin had struck him with surprise; nor was it till he was nearing Tallyn that he succeeded in shaking off the impression. Absurd! Everybody has some relations that require to be masked--like the stables, or the back door--in a skilful arrangement of life. Diana, his beautiful, unapproachable Diana, would soon, no doubt, be relieved of this young lady, with whom she could have no possible interests in common. And, perhaps, on one of his week-end visits to Tallyn and Beechcote, he might get a few minutes' conversation with Mrs. Colwood which would throw some light on the new guest.
Diana meanwhile, assisted by Mrs. Colwood, was hovering about her cousin. She and Miss Merton had kissed each other in the hall, and then Diana, seized with a sudden shyness, led her guest into the drawing-room and stood there speechless, a little; holding her by both hands and gazing at her; mastered by feeling and excitement.
"Well, you have got a queer old place!" said Fanny Merton, withdrawing herself. She turned and looked about her, at the room, the flowers, the wide hearth, with its blazing logs, at Mrs. Colwood, and finally at Diana.