The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Testing of Diana Mallory, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Illustrated by W. Hatherell

The Testing of
Diana Mallory

BY

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD

ILLUSTRATED BY
W. HATHERELL, R.I.

1908

TO
MY KIND HOSTS BEYOND THE ATLANTIC
FROM
A GRATEFUL TRAVELLER
JULY, 1908

CONTENTS
[Part I]
[[1]] [[2]] [[3]] [[4]] [[5]] [[6]]
[Part II]
[[7]] [[8]] [[9]] [[10]] [[11]] [[12]] [[13]] [[14]]
[Part III]
[[15]] [[16]] [[17]] [[18]] [[19]] [[20]] [[21]] [[22]] [[23]] [[24]]

Illustrations

Part I

"Action is transitory--a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle--this way or that--
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity."
--THE BORDERERS.

The Testing of Diana Mallory

CHAPTER I

The clock in the tower of the village church had just struck the quarter. In the southeast a pale dawn light was beginning to show above the curving hollow of the down wherein the village lay enfolded; but the face of the down itself was still in darkness. Farther to the south, in a stretch of clear night sky hardly touched by the mounting dawn, Venus shone enthroned, so large and brilliant, so near to earth and the spectator, that she held, she pervaded the whole dusky scene, the shadowed fields and wintry woods, as though she were their very soul and voice.

"The Star of Bethlehem!--and Christmas Day!"

Diana Mallory had just drawn back the curtain of her bedroom. Her voice, as she murmured the words, was full of a joyous delight; eagerness and yearning expressed themselves in her bending attitude, her parted lips and eyes intent upon the star.

The panelled room behind her was dimly lit by a solitary candle, just kindled. The faint dawn in front, the flickering candle-light behind, illumined Diana's tall figure, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, her small head and slender neck, the tumbling masses of her dark hair, and the hand holding the curtain. It was a kind and poetic light; but her youth and grace needed no softening.

After the striking of the quarter, the church bell began to ring, with a gentle, yet insistent note which gradually filled the hollows of the village, and echoed along the side of the down. Once or twice the sound was effaced by the rush and roar of a distant train; and once the call of an owl from a wood, a call melancholy and prolonged, was raised as though in rivalry. But the bell held Diana's strained ear throughout its course, till its mild clangor passed into the deeper note of the clock striking the hour, and then all sounds alike died into a profound yet listening silence.

"Eight o'clock! That was for early service," she thought; and there flashed into her mind an image of the old parish church, dimly lit for the Christmas Eucharist, its walls and pillars decorated with ivy and holly, yet austere and cold through all its adornings, with its bare walls and pale windows. She shivered a little, for her youth had been accustomed to churches all color and lights and furnishings--churches of another type and faith. But instantly some warm leaping instinct met the shrinking, and overpowered it. She smote her hands together.

"England!--England!--my own, own country!"

She dropped upon the window-seat half laughing, yet the tears in her eyes. And there, with her face pressed against the glass, she waited while the dawn stole upon the night, while in the park the trees emerged upon the grass white with rime, while on the face of the down thickets and paths became slowly visible, while the first wreaths of smoke began to curl and hover in the frosty air.

Suddenly, on a path which climbed the hill-side till it was lost in the beech wood which crowned the summit, she saw a flock of sheep, and behind them a shepherd boy running from side to side. At the sight, her eyes kindled again. "Nothing changes," she thought, "in this country life!" On the morning of Charles I.'s execution--in the winters and springs when Elizabeth was Queen--while Becket lay dead on Canterbury steps--when Harold was on his way to Senlac--that hill, that path were there--sheep were climbing it, and shepherds were herding them. "It has been so since England began--it will be so when I am dead. We are only shadows that pass. But England lives always--always--and shall live!"

And still, in a trance of feeling, she feasted her eyes on the quiet country scene.

The old house which Diana Mallory had just begun to inhabit stood upon an upland, but it was an upland so surrounded by hills to north and east and south that it seemed rather a close-girt valley, leaned over and sheltered by the downs. Pastures studded with trees sloped away from the house on all sides; the village was hidden from it by boundary woods; only the church tower emerged. From the deep oriel window where she sat Diana could see a projecting wing of the house itself, its mellowed red brick, its Jacobean windows and roof. She could see also a corner of the moat with its running stream, a moat much older than the building it encircled, and beneath her eyes lay a small formal garden planned in the days of John Evelyn--with its fountain and its sundial, and its beds in arabesque. The cold light of December lay upon it all; there was no special beauty in the landscape, and no magnificence in the house or its surroundings. But every detail of what she saw pleased the girl's taste, and satisfied her heart. All the while she was comparing it with other scenes and another landscape, amid which she had lived till now--a monotonous blue sea, mountains scorched and crumbled by the sun, dry palms in hot gardens, roads choked with dust and tormented with a plague of motor-cars, white villas crowded among high walls, a wilderness of hotels, and everywhere a chattering unlovely crowd.

"Thank goodness!--that's done with," she thought--only to fall into a sudden remorse. "Papa--papa!--if you were only here too!"

She pressed her hands to her eyes, which were moist with sudden tears. But the happiness in her heart overcame the pang, sharp and real as it was. Oh! how blessed to have done with the Riviera, and its hybrid empty life, for good and all!--how blessed even, to have done with the Alps and Italy!--how blessed, above all, to have come home!--home into the heart of this English land--warm mother-heart, into which she, stranger and orphan, might creep and be at rest.

The eloquence of her own thoughts possessed her. They flowed on in a warm, mute rhetoric, till suddenly the Comic Spirit was there, and patriotic rapture began to see itself. She, the wanderer, the exile, what did she know of England--or England of her? What did she know of this village even, this valley in which she had pitched her tent? She had taken an old house, because it had pleased her fancy, because it had Tudor gables, pretty panelling, and a sundial. But what natural link had she with it, or with these peasants and countrymen? She had no true roots here. What she had done was mere whim and caprice. She was an alien, like anybody else--like the new men and prowling millionaires, who bought old English properties, moved thereto by a feeling which was none the less snobbish because it was also sentimental.

She drew herself up--rebelling hotly--yet not seeing how to disentangle herself from these associates. And she was still struggling to put herself back in the romantic mood, and to see herself and her experiment anew in the romantic light, when her maid knocked at the door, and distraction entered with letters, and a cup of tea.

An hour later Miss Mallory left her room behind her, and went tripping down the broad oak staircase of Beechcote Manor.

By this time romance was uppermost again, and self-congratulation. She was young--just twenty-two; she was--she knew it--agreeable to look upon; she had as much money as any reasonable woman need want; she had already seen a great deal of the world outside England; and she had fallen headlong in love with this charming old house, and had now, in spite of various difficulties, managed to possess herself of it, and plant her life in it. Full of ghosts it might be; but she was its living mistress henceforth; nor was it either ridiculous or snobbish that she should love it and exult in it--quite the contrary. And she paused on the slippery stairs, to admire the old panelled hall below, the play of wintry sunlight on the oaken surfaces she herself had rescued from desecrating paint, and the effect of some old Persian rugs, which had only arrived from London the night before, on the dark polished boards. For Diana, there were two joys connected with the old house: the joy of entering in, a stranger and conqueror, on its guarded and matured beauty, and the joy of adding to that beauty by a deft modernness. Very deft, and tender, and skilful it must be. But no one could say that time-worn Persian rugs, with their iridescent blue and greens and rose reds--or old Italian damask and cut-velvet from Genoa, or Florence, or Venice--were out of harmony with the charming Jacobean rooms. It was the horrible furniture of the Vavasours, the ancestral possessors of the place, which had been an offence and a disfigurement. In moving it out and replacing it, Diana felt that she had become the spiritual child of the old house, in spite of her alien blood. There is a kinship not of the flesh; and it thrilled all through her.

But just as her pause of daily homage to the place in which she found herself was over, and she was about to run down the remaining stairs to the dining-room, a new thought delayed her for a moment by the staircase window--the thought of a lady who would no doubt be waiting for her at the breakfast-table.

Mrs. Colwood, Miss Mallory's new chaperon and companion, had arrived the night before, on Christmas Eve. She had appeared just in time for dinner, and the two ladies had spent the evening together. Diana's first impressions had been pleasant--yes, certainly, pleasant; though Mrs. Colwood had been shy, and Diana still more so. There could be no question but that Mrs. Colwood was refined, intelligent, and attractive. Her gentle, almost childish looks appealed for her. So did her deep black, and the story which explained it. Diana had heard of her from a friend in Rome, where Mrs. Colwood's husband, a young Indian Civil servant, had died of fever and lung mischief, on his way to England for a long sick leave and where the little widow had touched the hearts of all who came in contact with her.

Diana thought, with one of her ready compunctions, that she had not been expansive enough the night before. She ran down-stairs, determined to make Mrs. Colwood feel at home at once.

When she entered the dining-room the new companion was standing beside the window looking out upon the formal garden and the lawn beyond it. Her attitude was a little drooping, and as she turned to greet her hostess and employer, Diana's quick eyes seemed to perceive a trace of recent tears on the small face. The girl was deeply touched, though she made no sign. Poor little thing! A widow, and childless, in a strange place.

Mrs. Colwood, however, showed no further melancholy. She was full of admiration for the beauty of the frosty morning, the trees touched with rime, the browns and purples of the distant woods. She spoke shyly, but winningly, of the comfort of her room, and the thoughtfulness with which Miss Mallory had arranged it; she could not say enough of the picturesqueness of the house. Yet there was nothing fulsome in her praise. She had the gift which makes the saying of sweet and flattering things appear the merest simplicity. They escaped her whether she would or no--that at least was the impression; and Diana found it agreeable. So agreeable that before they had been ten minutes at table Miss Mallory, in response, was conscious on her own part of an unusually strong wish to please her new companion--to make a good effect. Diana, indeed, was naturally governed by the wish to please. She desired above all things to be liked--that is, if she could not be loved. Mrs. Colwood brought with her a warm and favoring atmosphere. Diana unfolded.

In the course of this first exploratory conversation, it appeared that the two ladies had many experiences in common. Mrs. Colwood had been two years, her two short years of married life, in India; Diana had travelled there with her father. Also, as a girl, Mrs. Colwood had spent a winter at Cannes, and another at Santa Margherita. Diana expressed with vehemence her weariness of the Riviera; but the fact that Mrs. Colwood differed from her led to all the more conversation.

"My father would never come home," sighed Diana. "He hated the English climate, even in summer. Every year I used to beg him to let us go to England. But he never would. We lived abroad, first, I suppose, for his health, and then--I can't explain it. Perhaps he thought he had been so long away he would find no old friends left. And indeed so many of them had died. But whenever I talked of it he began to look old and ill. So I never could press it--never!"

The girl's voice fell to a lower note--musical, and full of memory. Mrs. Colwood noticed the quality of it.

"Of course if my mother had lived," said Diana, in the same tone, "it would have been different."

"But she died when you were a child?"

"Eighteen years ago. I can just remember it. We were in London then. Afterwards father took me abroad, and we never came back. Oh! the waste of all those years!"

"Waste?" Mrs. Colwood probed the phrase a little. Diana insisted, first with warmth, and then with an eloquence that startled her companion, that for an Englishwoman to be brought up outside England, away from country and countrymen, was to waste and forego a hundred precious things that might have been gathered up. "I used to be ashamed when I talked to English people. Not that we saw many. We lived for years and years at a little villa near Rapallo, and in the summer we used to go up into the mountains, away from everybody. But after we came back from a long tour, we lived for a time at a hotel in Mentone--our own little house was let--and I used to talk to people there--though papa never liked making friends. And I made ridiculous mistakes about English things--and they'd laugh. But one can't know--unless one has lived--has breathed in a country, from one's birth. That's what I've lost."

Mrs. Colwood demurred.

"Think of the people who wish they had grown up without ever reading or hearing about the Bible, so that they might read it for the first time, when they could really understand it. You feel England all the more intensely now because you come fresh to her."

Diana sprang up, with a change of face--half laugh, half frown.

"Yes, I feel her! Above all, I feel her enemies!"

She let in her dog, a fine collie, who was scratching at the door. As she stood before the fire, holding up a biscuit for him to jump at, she turned a red and conscious face towards her companion. The fire in the eyes, the smile on the lip seemed to say:

"There!--now we have come to it. This is my passion--my hobby--this is me!"

"Her enemies! You are political?"

"Desperately!"

"A Tory?"

"Fanatical. But that's only part of it, 'What should they know of England, that only England know!'"

Miss Mallory threw back her head with a gesture that became it.

"Ah, I see--an Imperialist?"

Diana nodded, smiling. She had seated herself in a chair by the fireside. Her dog's head was on her knees, and one of her slender hands rested on the black and tan. Mrs. Colwood admired the picture. Miss Mallory's sloping shoulders and long waist were well shown by her simple dress of black and closely fitting serge. Her head crowned and piled with curly black hair, carried itself with an amazing self-possession and pride, which was yet all feminine. This young woman might talk politics, thought her new friend; no male man would call her prater, while she bore herself with that air. Her eyes--the chaperon noticed it for the first time--owed some of their remarkable intensity, no doubt, to short sight. They were large, finely colored and thickly fringed, but their slightly veiled concentration suggested an habitual, though quite unconscious struggle to see--with that clearness which the mind behind demanded of them. The complexion was a clear brunette, the cheeks rosy; the nose was slightly tilted, the mouth fresh and beautiful though large; and the face of a lovely oval. Altogether, an aspect of rich and glowing youth: no perfect beauty; but something arresting, ardent--charged, perhaps over-charged, with personality. Mrs. Colwood said to herself that life at Beechcote would be no stagnant pool.

While they lingered in the drawing-room before church, she kept Diana talking. It seemed that Miss Mallory had seen Egypt, India, and Canada, in the course of her last two years of life with her father. Their travels had spread over more than a year; and Diana had brought Mr. Mallory back to the Riviera, only, it appeared, to die, after some eight months of illness. But in securing to her that year of travel, her father had bestowed his last and best gift upon her. Aided by his affection, and stimulated by his knowledge, her mind and character had rapidly developed. And, as through a natural outlet, all her starved devotion for the England she had never known, had spent itself upon the Englands she found beyond the seas; upon the hard-worked soldiers and civilians in lonely Indian stations, upon the captains of English ships, upon the pioneers of Canadian fields and railways; upon England, in fact, as the arbiter of oriental faiths--the wrestler with the desert--the mother and maker of new states. A passion for the work of her race beyond these narrow seas--a passion of sympathy, which was also a passion of antagonism, since every phase of that work, according to Miss Mallory, had been dogged by the hate and calumny of base minds--expressed itself through her charming mouth, with a quite astonishing fluency. Mrs. Colwood's mind moved uneasily. She had expected an orphan girl, ignorant of the world, whom she might mother, and perhaps mould. She found a young Egeria, talking politics with raised color and a throbbing voice, as other girls might talk of lovers or chiffons. Egeria's companion secretly and with some alarm reviewed her own equipment in these directions. Miss Mallory discoursed of India. Mrs. Colwood had lived in it. But her husband had entered the Indian Civil Service, simply in order that he might have money enough to marry her. And during their short time together, they had probably been more keenly alive to the depreciation of the rupee than to ideas of England's imperial mission. But Herbert had done his duty, of course he had. Once or twice as Miss Mallory talked the little widow's eyes filled with tears again unseen. The Indian names Diana threw so proudly into air were, for her companion, symbols of heart-break and death. But she played her part; and her comments and interjections were all that was necessary to keep the talk flowing.

In the midst of it voices were suddenly heard outside. Diana started.

"Carols!" she said, with flushing cheeks. "The first time I have heard them in England itself!"

She flew to the hall, and threw the door open. A handful of children appeared shouting "Good King Wenceslas" in a hideous variety of keys. Miss Mallory heard them with enthusiasm; then turned to the butler behind her.

"Give them a shilling, please, Brown."

A quick change passed over the countenance of the man addressed.

"Lady Emily, ma'am, never gave more than three-pence."

This stately person had formerly served the Vavasours, and was much inclined to let his present mistress know it.

Diana looked disappointed, but submissive.

"Oh, very well, Brown--I don't want to alter any of the old ways. But I hear the choir will come up to-night. Now they must have five shillings--and supper, please, Brown."

Brown drew himself up a little more stiffly.

"Lady Emily always gave 'em supper, ma'am, but, begging your pardon, she didn't hold at all with giving 'em money."

"Oh, I don't care!" said Miss Mallory, hastily. "I'm sure they'll like it, Brown! Five shillings, please."

Brown withdrew, and Diana, with a laughing face and her hands over her ears, to mitigate the farewell bawling of the children, turned to Mrs. Colwood, with an invitation to dress for church.

"The first time for me," she explained. "I have been coming up and down, for a month or more, two or three days at a time, to see to the furnishing. But now I am at home!"

The Christmas service in the parish church was agreeable enough. The Beechcote pew was at the back of the church, and as the new mistress of the old house entered and walked down the aisle, she drew the eyes of a large congregation of rustics and small shopkeepers. Diana moved in a kind of happy absorption, glancing gently from side to side. This gathering of villagers was to her representative of a spiritual and national fellowship to which she came now to be joined. The old church, wreathed in ivy and holly; the tombs in the southern aisle; the loaves standing near the porch for distribution after service, in accordance with an old benefaction; the fragments of fifteenth-century glass in the windows; the school-children to her left; the singing, the prayers, the sermon--found her in a welcoming, a child-like mood. She knelt, she sang, she listened, like one undergoing initiation, with a tender aspiring light in her eyes, and an eager mobility of expression.

Mrs. Colwood was more critical. The clergyman who preached the sermon did not, in fact, please her at all. He was a thin High Churchman, with an oblong face and head, narrow shoulders, and a spare frame. He wore spectacles, and his voice was disagreeably pitched. His sermon was nevertheless remarkable. A bare yet penetrating style; a stern view of life; the voice of a prophet, and apparently the views of a socialist--all these he possessed. None of them, it might have been thought, were especially fitted to capture either the female or the rustic mind. Yet it could not be denied that the congregation was unusually good for a village church; and by the involuntary sigh which Miss Mallory gave as the sermon ended, Mrs. Colwood was able to gauge the profound and docile attention with which one at least had listened to it.

After church there was much lingering in the churchyard for the exchange of Christmas greetings. Mrs. Colwood found herself introduced to the Vicar, Mr. Lavery; to a couple of maiden ladies of the name of Bertram, who seemed to have a good deal to do with the Vicar, and with the Church affairs of the village; and to an elderly couple, Dr. and Mrs. Roughsedge, white-haired, courteous, and kind, who were accompanied by a soldier son, in whom it was evident they took a boundless pride. The young man, of a handsome and open countenance, looked at Miss Mallory as much as good manners allowed. She, however, had eyes for no one but the Vicar, with whom she started, tête-à-tête, in the direction of the Vicarage.

Mrs. Colwood followed, shyly making acquaintance with the Roughsedges, and the elder Miss Bertram. That lady was tall, fair, and faded; she had a sharp, handsome nose, and a high forehead; and her eyes, which hardly ever met those of the person with whom she talked, gave the impression of a soul preoccupied, with few or none of the ordinary human curiosities.

Mrs. Roughsedge, on the other hand, was most human, motherly, and inquisitive. She wore two curls on either side of her face held by small combs, a large bonnet, and an ample cloak. It was clear that whatever adoration she could spare from her husband was lavished on her son. But there was still enough good temper and good will left to overflow upon the rest of mankind. She perceived in a moment that Mrs. Colwood was the new "companion" to the heiress, that she was a widow, and sad--in spite of her cheerfulness.

"Now I hope Miss Mallory is going to like us!" she said, with a touch of confidential good-humor, as she drew Mrs. Colwood a little behind the others. "We are all in love with her already. But she must be patient with us. We're very humdrum folk!"

Mrs. Colwood could only say that Miss Mallory seemed to be in love with everything--the house, the church, the village, and the neighbors. Mrs. Roughsedge shook her gray curls, smiling, as she replied that this was no doubt partly due to novelty. After her long residence abroad, Miss Mallory was--it was very evident--glad to come home. Poor thing--she must have known a great deal of trouble--an only child, and no mother! "Well, I'm sure if there's anything we can do--"

Mrs. Roughsedge nodded cheerfully towards her husband and son in front. The gesture awakened a certain natural reserve in Mrs. Colwood, followed by a quick feeling of amusement with herself that she should so soon have developed the instinct of the watch-dog. But it was not to be denied that the new mistress of Beechcote was well endowed, as single women go. Fond mothers with marriageable sons might require some handling.

But Mrs. Roughsedge's simple kindness soon baffled distrust. And Mrs. Colwood was beginning to talk freely, when suddenly the Vicar and Miss Mallory in front came to a stop. The way to the Vicarage lay along a side road. The Roughsedges also, who had walked so far for sociability's sake, must return to the village and early dinner. The party broke up. Miss Mallory, as she made her good-byes, appeared a little flushed and discomposed. But the unconscious fire in her glance, and the vigor of her carriage, did but add to her good looks. Captain Roughsedge, as he touched her hand, asked whether he should find her at home that afternoon if he called, and Diana absently said yes.

"What a strange impracticable man!" cried Miss Mallory hotly, as the ladies turned into the Beechcote drive. "It is really a misfortune to find a man of such opinions in this place."

"The Vicar?" said Mrs. Colwood, bewildered

"A Little Englander!--a socialist! And so rude too! I asked him to let me help him with, his poor--and he threw back my offers in my face. What they wanted, he said, was not charity, but justice. And justice apparently means cutting up the property of the rich, and giving it to the poor. Is it my fault if the Vavasours neglected their cottages? I just mentioned emigration, and he foamed! I am sure he would give away the Colonies for a pinch of soap, and abolish the Army and Navy to-morrow."

Diana's face glowed with indignation--with wounded feeling besides. Mrs. Colwood endeavored to soothe her, but she remained grave and rather silent for some time. The flow of Christmas feeling and romantic pleasure had been arrested, and the memory of a harsh personality haunted the day. In the afternoon, however, in the unpacking of various pretty knick-knacks, and in the putting away of books and papers, Diana recovered herself. She flitted about the house, arranging her favorite books, hanging pictures, and disposing embroideries. The old walls glowed afresh under her hand, and from the combination of their antique beauty with her young taste, a home began to emerge, stamped with a woman's character and reflecting her enthusiasms. As she assisted in the task, Mrs. Colwood learned many things. She gathered that Miss Mallory read two or three languages, that she was passionately fond of French memoirs and the French classics, that her father had taught her Latin and German, and guided every phase of her education. Traces indeed of his poetic and scholarly temper were visible throughout his daughter's possessions--so plainly, that at last as they came nearly to the end of the books, Diana's gayety once more disappeared. She moved soberly and dreamily, as though the past returned upon her; and once or twice Mrs. Colwood came upon her standing motionless, her finger in an open book, her eyes wandering absently through the casement windows to the distant wall of hill. Sometimes, as she bent over the books and packets she would say little things, or quote stories of her father, which seemed to show a pretty wish on her part to make the lady who was now to be her companion understand something of the feelings and memories on which her life was based. But there was dignity in it all, and, besides, a fundamental awe and reserve. Mrs. Colwood seemed to see that there were remembrances connected with her father far too poignant to be touched in speech.

At tea-time Captain Roughsedge appeared. Mrs. Colwood's first impression of his good manners and good looks was confirmed. But his conversation could not be said to flow: and in endeavoring to entertain him the two ladies fought a rather uphill fight. Then Diana discovered that he belonged to the Sixtieth Rifles, whereupon the young lady disclosed a knowledge of the British Army, and its organization, which struck her visitor as nothing short of astounding. He listened to her open-mouthed while she rattled on, mainly to fill up the gaps in his own remarks; and when she paused, he bluntly complimented her on her information. "Oh, that was papa!" said Diana, with a smile and a sigh. "He taught me all he could about the Army, though he himself had only been a Volunteer. There was an old History of the British Army I was brought up on. It was useful when we went to India--because I knew so much about the regiments we came across."

This accomplishment of hers proved indeed a god-send; the young man found his tongue; and the visit ended much better than it began.

As he said good-bye, he looked, round the drawing-room in wonderment.

"How you've altered it! The Vavasours made it hideous. But I've only been in this room twice before, though my people have lived here thirty years. We were never smart enough for Lady Emily."

He colored as he spoke, and Diana suspected in him a memory of small past humiliations. Evidently he was sensitive as well as shy.

"Hard work--dear young man!" she said, with a smile, and a stretch, as the door closed upon him. "But after all--'que j'aime le militaire'! Now, shall we go back to work?"

There were still some books to unpack. Presently Mrs. Colwood found herself helping to carry a small but heavy box of papers to the sitting-room which Diana had arranged for herself next to her bedroom. Mrs. Colwood noticed that before Diana asked her assistance she dismissed her new maid, who had been till then actively engaged in the unpacking. Miss Mallory herself unlocked the trunk in which the despatch-box had arrived, and took it out. The box had an old green baize covering which was much frayed and worn. Diana placed it on the floor of her bedroom, where Mrs. Colwood had been helping her in various unpackings, and went away for a minute to clear a space for it in the locked wall-cupboard to which it was to be consigned. Her companion, left alone, happened to see that an old mended tear in the green baize had given way in Diana's handling of the box, and quite involuntarily her eyes caught a brass plate on the morocco lid, which bore the words, "Sparling papers." Diana came back at the moment, and perceived the uncovered label. She flushed a little, hesitated, and then said, looking first at the label and then at Mrs. Colwood: "I think I should like you to know--my name was not always Mallory. We were Sparlings--but my father took the name of Mallory after my mother's death. It was his mother's name, and there was an old Mallory uncle who left him a property. I believe he was glad to change his name. He never spoke to me of any Sparling relations. He was an only child, and I always suppose his father must have been very unkind to him--and that they quarrelled. At any rate, he quite dropped the name, and never would let me speak of it. My mother had hardly any relations either--only one sister who married and went to Barbadoes. So our old name was very soon forgotten. And please"--she looked up appealingly--"now that I have told you, will you forget it too? It always seemed to hurt papa to hear it, and I never could bear to do--or say--anything that gave him pain."

She spoke with a sweet seriousness. Mrs. Colwood, who had been conscious of a slight shock of puzzled recollection, gave an answer which evidently pleased Diana, for the girl held out her hand and pressed that of her companion; then they carried the box to its place, and were leaving the room, when suddenly Diana, with a joyous exclamation, pounced on a book which was lying on the floor, tumbled among a dozen others recently unpacked.

"Mr. Marsham's Rossetti! I am glad. Now I can face him!"

She looked up all smiles.

"Do you know that I am going to take you to a party next week?--to the Marshams? They live near here--at Tallyn Hall. They have asked us for two nights--Thursday to Saturday. I hope you won't mind."

"Have I got a dress?" said Mrs. Colwood, anxiously.

"Oh, that doesn't matter!--not at the Marshams. I am glad!" repeated Diana, fondling the book--"If I really had lost it, it would have given him a horrid advantage!"

"Who is Mr. Marsham?"

"A gentleman we got to know at Rapallo," said Diana, still smiling to herself. "He and his mother were there last winter. Father and I quarrelled with him all day long. He is the worst Radical I ever met, but--"

"But?--but agreeable?"

"Oh yes," said Diana, uncertainly, and Mrs. Colwood thought she colored--"oh yes--agreeable!"

"And he lives near here?"

"He is the member for the division. Such a crew as we shall meet there!" Diana laughed out. "I had better warn you. But they have been very kind. They called directly they knew I had taken the house. 'They' means Mr. Oliver Marsham and his mother. I am glad I've found his book!" She went off embracing it.

Mrs. Colwood was left with two impressions--one sharp, the other vague. One was that Mr. Oliver Marsham might easily become a personage in the story of which she had just, as it were, turned the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words--which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a far-off past.

CHAPTER II

During the days immediately following her arrival at Beechcote, Mrs. Colwood applied herself to a study of Miss Mallory and her surroundings--none the less penetrating because the student was modest and her method unperceived. She divined a nature unworldly, impulsive, steeped, moreover, for all its spiritual and intellectual force, which was considerable, in a kind of sensuous romance--much connected with concrete things and symbols, places, persons, emblems, or relics, any contact with which might at any time bring the color to the girl's cheeks and the tears to her eyes. Honor--personal or national--the word was to Diana like a spark to dry leaves. Her whole nature flamed to it, and there were moments when she walked visibly transfigured in the glow of it. Her mind was rich, moreover, in the delicate, inchoate lovers, the half-poetic, half-intellectual passions, the mystical yearnings and aspirations, which haunt a pure expanding youth. Such human beings, Mrs. Colwood reflected, are not generally made for happiness. But there were also in Diana signs both of practical ability and of a rare common-sense. Would this last avail to protect her from her enthusiasms? Mrs. Colwood remembered a famous Frenchwoman of whom it was said: "Her judgment is infallible--her conduct one long mistake!" The little companion was already sufficiently attached to Miss Mallory to hope that in this case a natural tact and balance might not be thrown away.

As to suitors and falling in love, the natural accompaniments of such a charming youth, Mrs. Colwood came across no traces of anything of the sort. During her journey with her father to India, Japan, and America, Miss Mallory had indeed for the first time seen something of society. But in the villa beside the Mediterranean it was evident that her life with her father had been one of complete seclusion. She and he had lived for each other. Books, sketching, long walks, a friendly interest in their peasant neighbors--these had filled their time.

It took, indeed, but a short time to discover in Miss Mallory a hunger for society which seemed to be the natural result of long starvation. With her neighbors the Roughsedges she was already on the friendliest terms. To Dr. Roughsedge, who was infirm, and often a prisoner to his library, she paid many small attentions which soon won the heart of an old student. She was in love with Mrs. Roughsedge's gray curls and motherly ways; and would consult her about servants and tradesmen with an eager humility. She liked the son, it seemed, for the parents' sake, nor was it long before he was allowed--at his own pressing request--to help in hanging pictures and arranging books at Beechcote. A girl's manner with young men is always a matter of interest to older women. Mrs. Colwood thought that Diana's manner to the young soldier could not have been easily bettered. It was frank and gay--with just that tinge of old-fashioned reserve which might be thought natural in a girl of gentle breeding, brought up alone by a fastidious father. With all her impetuosity, indeed, there was about her something markedly virginal and remote, which is commoner, perhaps, in Irish than English women. Mrs. Colwood watched the effect of it on Captain Roughsedge. After her third day of acquaintance with him, she said to herself: "He will fall in love with her!" But she said it with compassion, and without troubling to speculate on the lady. Whereas, with regard to the Marsham visit, she already--she could hardly have told why--found herself full of curiosity.

Meanwhile, in the few days which elapsed before that visit was due, Diana was much called on by the country-side. The girl restrained her restlessness, and sat at home, receiving everybody with a friendliness which might have been insipid but for its grace and spontaneity. She disliked no one, was bored by no one. The joy of her home-coming seemed to halo them all. Even the sour Miss Bertrams could not annoy her; she thought them sensible and clever; even the tiresome Mrs. Minchin of Minchin Hall, the "gusher" of the county, who "adored" all mankind and ill-treated her step-daughter, even she was dubbed "very kind," till Mrs. Roughsedge, next day, kindled a passion in the girl's eyes by some tales of the step-daughter. Mrs. Colwood wondered whether, indeed, she could be bored, as Mrs. Minchin had not achieved it. Those who talk easily and well, like Diana, are less keenly aware, she thought, of the platitudes of their neighbors. They are not defenceless, like the shy and the silent.

Nevertheless, it was clear that if Diana welcomed the neighbors with pleasure she often saw them go with relief. As soon as the house was clear of them, she would stand pensively by the fire, looking down into the blaze like one on whom a dream suddenly descends--then would often call her dog, and go out alone, into the winter twilight. From these rambles she would return grave--sometimes with reddened eyes. But at all times, as Mrs. Colwood soon began to realize, there was but a thin line of division between her gayety and some inexplicable sadness, some unspoken grief, which seemed to rise upon her and overshadow her, like a cloud tangled in the woods of spring. Mrs. Colwood could only suppose that these times of silence and eclipse were connected in some way with her father and her loss of him. But whenever they occurred, Mrs. Colwood found her own mind invincibly recalled to that name on the box of papers, which still haunted her, still brought with it a vague sense of something painful and harrowing--a breath of desolation, in strange harmony, it often seemed, with certain looks and moods of Diana. But Mrs. Colwood searched her memory in vain. And, indeed, after a little while, some imperious instinct even forbade her the search--so rapid and strong was the growth of sympathy with the young life which had called her to its aid.

The day of the Marsham visit arrived--a January afternoon clear and frosty. In the morning before they were to start, Diana seemed to be often closeted with her maid, and once in passing Miss Mallory's open door, her companion could not help seeing a consultation going on, and a snowy white dress, with black ribbons, lying on the bed. Heretofore Diana had only appeared in black, the strict black which French dressmakers understand, for it was little more than a year since her father's death. The thought of seeing her in white stirred Mrs. Colwood's expectations.

Tallyn Hall was eight miles from Beechcote. The ladies were to drive, but in order to show Mrs. Colwood something of the country, Diana decreed that they should walk up to the downs by a field path, meeting the carriage which bore their luggage at a convenient point on the main road.

The day was a day of beauty--the trees and grass lightly rimed, the air sparkling and translucent. Nature was held in the rest of winter; but beneath the outward stillness, one caught as it were the strong heart-beat of the mighty mother. Diana climbed the steep down without a pause, save when she turned round from time to time to help her companion. Her slight firm frame, the graceful decision of her movements, the absence of all stress and effort showed a creature accustomed to exercise and open air; Mrs. Colwood, the frail Anglo-Indian to whom walking was a task, tried to rival her in vain; and Diana was soon full of apologies and remorse for having tempted her to the climb.

"Please!--please!"--the little lady panted, as they reached the top--"wasn't this worth it?"

For they stood in one of the famous wood and common lands of Southern England--great beeches towering overhead--glades opening to right and left--ferny paths over green turf-tracks, and avenues of immemorial age, the highways of a vanished life--old earth-works, overgrown--lanes deep-sunk in the chalk where the pack-horses once made their way--gnarled thorns, bent with years, yet still white-mantled in the spring: a wild, enchanted no-man's country, owned it seemed by rabbits and birds, solitary, lovely, and barren--yet from its furthest edge, the high spectator, looking eastward, on a clear night, might see on the horizon the dim flare of London.

Diana's habitual joy broke out, as she stood gazing at the village below, the walls and woods of Beechcote, the church, the plough-lands, and the far-western plain, drawn in pale grays and purples under the declining sun.

"Isn't it heavenly!--the browns--the blues--the soberness, the delicacy of it all? Oh, so much better than any tiresome Mediterranean--any stupid Riviera!--Ah!" She stopped and turned, checked by a sound behind her.

Captain Roughsedge appeared, carrying his gun, his spaniel beside him. He greeted the ladies with what seemed to Mrs. Colwood a very evident start of pleasure, and turned to walk with them.

"You have been shooting?" said Diana.

He admitted it.

"That's what you enjoy?"

He flushed.

"More than anything in the world."

But he looked at his questioner a little askance, as though uncertain how she might take so gross a confession.

Diana laughed, and hoped he got as much as he desired. Then he was not like his father--who cared so much for books?

"Oh, books!" He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, the fact is, I--I don't often read if I can help it. But of course they make you do a lot of it--with these beastly examinations. They've about spoiled the army with them."

"You wouldn't do it for pleasure?"

"What--reading?" He shook his head decidedly. "Not while I could be doing anything else."

"Not history or poetry?"

He looked at her again nervously. But the girl's face was gay, and he ventured on the truth.

"Well, no, I can't say I do. My father reads a deal of poetry aloud."

"And it bores you?"

"Well, I don't understand it," he said, slowly and candidly.

"Don't you even read the papers?" asked Diana, wondering.

He started.

"Why, I should think I do!" he cried. "I should rather think I do! That's another thing altogether--that's not books."

"Then perhaps you read the debate last night?" She looked at him with a kindling eye.

"Of course I did--every word of it! Do you know what those Radical fellows are up to now? They'll never rest until we've lost the Khaibar--and then the Lord only knows what'll happen."

Diana flew into discussion--quick breath, red cheeks! Mrs. Colwood looked on amazed.

Presently both appealed to her, the Anglo-Indian. But she smiled and stammered--declining the challenge. Beside their eagerness, their passion, she felt herself tongue-tied. Captain Roughsedge had seen two years' service on the Northwest Frontier; Diana had ridden through the Khaibar with her father and a Lieutenant-Governor. In both the sense of England's historic task as the guardian of a teeming India against onslaught from the north, had sunk deep, not into brain merely. Figures of living men, acts of heroism and endurance, the thought of English soldiers ambushed in mountain defiles, or holding out against Afridi hordes in lonely forts, dying and battling, not for themselves, but that the great mountain barrier might hold against the savagery of the north, and English honor and English power maintain themselves unscathed--these had mingled, in both, with the chivalry and the red blood of youth. The eyes of both had seen; the hearts of both had felt.

And now, in the English House of Commons, there were men who doubted and sneered about these things--who held an Afridi life dearer than an English one--who cared nothing for the historic task, who would let India go to-morrow without a pang!

Misguided recreants! But Mrs. Colwood, looking on, could only feel that had they never played their impish part, the winter afternoon for these two companions of hers would have been infinitely less agreeable.

For certainly denunication and argument became Diana--all the more that she was no "female franzy" who must have all the best of the talk; she listened--she evoked--she drew on, and drew out. Mrs. Colwood was secretly sure that this very modest and ordinarily stupid young man had never talked so well before, that his mother would have been astonished could she have beheld him. What had come to the young women of this generation! Their grandmothers cared for politics only so far as they advanced the fortunes of their lords--otherwise what was Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba? But these women have minds for the impersonal. Diana was not talking to make an effect on Captain Roughsedge--that was the strange part of it. Hundreds of women can make politics serve the primitive woman's game; the "come hither in the ee" can use that weapon as well as any other. But here was an intellectual, a patriotic passion, veritable, genuine, not feigned.

Well!--the spectator admitted it--unwillingly--so long as the debater, the orator, were still desirable, still lovely. She stole a glance at Captain Roughsedge. Was he, too, so unconscious of sex, of opportunity? Ah! that she doubted! The young man played his part stoutly; flung back the ball without a break; but there were glances, and movements and expressions, which to this shrewd feminine eye appeared to betray what no scrutiny could detect in Diana--a pleasure within a pleasure, and thoughts behind thoughts. At any rate, he prolonged the walk as long as it could be prolonged; he accompanied them to the very door of their carriage, and would have delayed them there but that Diana looked at her watch in dismay.

"You'll hear plenty of that sort of stuff to-night!" he said, as he helped them to their wraps. "'Perish India!' and all the rest of it. All they'll mind at Tallyn will be that the Afridis haven't killed a few more Britishers."

Diana gave him a rather grave smile and bow as the carriage drove on. Mrs. Colwood wondered whether the Captain's last remark had somehow offended her companion. But Miss Mallory made no reference to it. Instead, she began to give her companion some preliminary information as to the party they were likely to find at Tallyn.

As Mrs. Colwood already knew, Mr. Oliver Marsham, member for the Western division of Brookshire, was young and unmarried. He lived with his mother, Lady Lucy Marsham, the owner of Tallyn Hall; and his widowed sister, Mrs. Fotheringham, was also a constant inmate of the house. Mrs. Fotheringham was if possible more extreme in opinions than her brother, frequented platforms, had quarrelled with all her Conservative relations, including a family of stepsons, and supported Women's Suffrage. It was evident that Diana was steeling herself to some endurance in this quarter. As to the other guests whom they might expect, Diana knew little. She had heard that Mr. Ferrier was to be there--ex-Home Secretary, and now leader of the Opposition--and old Lady Niton. Diana retailed what gossip she knew of this rather famous personage, whom three-fourths of the world found insolent and the rest witty. "They say, anyway, that she can snub Mrs. Fotheringham," said Diana, laughing.

"You met them abroad?"

"Only Mr. Marsham and Lady Lucy. Papa and I were walking over the hills at Portofino. We fell in with him, and he asked us the way to San Fruttuoso. We were going there, so we showed him. Papa liked him, and he came to see us afterwards--several times. Lady Lucy came once."

"She is nice?"

"Oh yes," said Diana, vaguely, "she is quite beautiful for her age. You never saw such lovely hands. And so fastidious--so dainty! I remember feeling uncomfortable all the time, because I knew I had a tear in my dress, and my hair was untidy--and I was certain she noticed."

"It's all rather alarming," said Mrs. Colwood, smiling.

"No, no!"--Diana turned upon her eagerly. "They're very kind--very, very kind!"

The winter day was nearly gone when they reached their destination. But there was just light enough, as they stepped out of the carriage, to show a large modern building, built of red brick, with many gables and bow-windows, and a generally restless effect. As they followed the butler through the outer hall, a babel of voices made itself heard, and when he threw open the door into the inner hall, they found themselves ushered into a large party.

There was a pleased exclamation from a tall fair man standing near the fire, who came forward at once to meet them.

"So glad to see you! But we hoped for you earlier! Mother, here is Miss Mallory."

Lady Lucy, a woman of sixty, still slender and stately, greeted them kindly, Mrs. Colwood was introduced, and room was made for the new-comers in the circle round the tea-table, which was presided over by a lady with red hair and an eye-glass, who gave a hand to Diana, and a bow, or more precisely a nod, to Mrs. Colwood.

"I'm Oliver's sister--my name's Fotheringham. That's my cousin--Madeleine Varley. Madeleine, find me some cups! This is Mr. Ferrier--Mr. Ferrier, Miss Mallory.--expect you know Lady Niton.--Sir James Chide, Miss Mallory.--Perhaps that'll do to begin with!" said Mrs. Fotheringham, carelessly, glancing at a further group of people. "Now I'll give you some tea."

Diana sat down, very shy, and a little flushed. Mr. Marsham hovered about her, inducing her to loosen her furs, bringing her tea, and asking questions about her settlement at Beechcote. He showed also a marked courtesy to Mrs. Colwood, and the little widow, susceptible to every breath of kindness, formed the prompt opinion that he was both handsome and agreeable.

Oliver Marsham, indeed, was not a person to be overlooked. His height was about six foot three; and his long slender limbs and spare frame had earned him, as a lad, among the men of his father's works, the description of "two yards o' pump-waater, straight oop an' down." But in his thin lengthiness there was nothing awkward--rather a graceful readiness and vigor. And the head which surmounted this lightly built body gave to the whole personality the force and weight it might otherwise have missed. The hair was very thick and very fair, though already slightly grizzled. It lay in heavy curly masses across a broad head, defining a strong brow above deeply set small eyes of a pale conspicuous blue. The nose, aquiline and large; the mouth large also, but thin-lipped and flexible; slight hollows in the cheeks, and a long, lantern jaw. The whole figure made an impression of ease, power, and self-confidence.

"So you like your old house?" he said, presently, to Diana, sitting down beside her, and dropping his voice a little.

"It suits me perfectly."

"I am certain the moat is rheumatic! But you will never admit it."

"I would, if it were true," she said, smiling.

"No!--you are much too romantic. You see, I remember our conversations."

"Did I never admit the truth?"

"You would never admit it was the truth. And my difficulty was to find an arbiter between us."

Diana's face changed a little. He perceived it instantly.

"Your father was sometimes arbiter," he said, in a still lower tone--"but naturally he took your side. I shall always rejoice I had that chance of meeting him."

Diana said nothing, but her dark eyes turned on him with a soft friendly look. His own smiled in response, and he resumed:

"I suppose you don't know many of these people here?"

"Not any."

"I'm sure you'll like Mr. Ferrier. He is our very old friend--almost my guardian. Of course--on politics--you won't agree!"

"I didn't expect to agree with anybody here," said Diana, slyly.

He laughed.

"I might offer you Lady Niton--but I refrain. To-morrow I have reason to believe that two Tories are coming to dinner."

"Which am I to admire?--your liberality, or their courage?"

"I have matched them by two socialists. Which will you sit next?"

"Oh, I am proof!" said Diana. "'Come one, come all.'"

He looked at her smilingly.

"Is it always the same? Are you still in love with all the dear old abuses?"

"And do you still hate everything that wasn't made last week?"

"Oh no! We only hate what cheats or oppresses the people."

"The people?" echoed Diana, with an involuntary lift of the eyebrows, and she looked round the immense hall, with its costly furniture, its glaring electric lights, and the band of bad fresco which ran round its lower walls.

Oliver Marsham reddened a little; then said:

"I see my cousin Miss Drake. May I introduce her?--Alicia!"

A young lady had entered, from a curtained archway dividing the hall from a passage beyond. She paused a moment examining the company. The dark curtain behind her made an effective background for the brilliance of her hair, dress, and complexion, of which fact--such at least was Diana's instant impression--she was most composedly aware. At least she lingered a few leisurely seconds, till everybody in the hall had had the opportunity of marking her entrance. Then beckoned by Oliver Marsham, she moved toward Diana.

"How do you do? I suppose you've had a long drive? Don't you hate driving?"

And without waiting for an answer, she turned affectedly away, and took a place at the tea-table where room had been made for her by two young men. Reaching out a white hand, she chose a cake, and began to nibble it slowly, her elbows resting on the table, the ruffles of white lace falling back from her bare and rounded arms. Her look meanwhile, half absent, half audacious, seemed to wander round the persons near, as though she saw them, without taking any real account of them.

"What have you been doing, Alicia, all this time?" said Marsham, as he handed her a cup of tea.

"Dressing."

An incredulous shout from the table.

"Since lunch!"

Miss Drake nodded. Lady Lucy put in an explanatory remark about a "dressmaker from town," but was not heard. The table was engaged in watching the new-comer.

"May we congratulate you on the result?" said Mr. Ferrier, putting up his eye-glass.

"If you like," said Miss Drake, indifferently, still gently munching at her cake. Then suddenly she smiled--a glittering infectious smile, to which unconsciously all the faces near her responded. "I have been reading the book you lent me!" she said, addressing Mr. Ferrier.

"Well?"

"I'm too stupid--I can't understand it."

Mr. Ferrier laughed.

"I'm afraid that excuse won't do, Miss Alicia. You must find another."

She was silent a moment, finished her cake, then took some grapes, and began to play with them in the same conscious provocative way--till at last she turned upon her immediate neighbor, a young barrister with a broad boyish face.

"Well, I wonder whether you'd mind?"

"Mind what?"

"If your father had done something shocking--forged--or murdered--or done something of that kind--supposing, of course, he were dead."

"Do you mean--if I suddenly found out?"

She nodded assent.

"Well!" he reflected; "it would be disagreeable!"

"Yes--but would it make you give up all the things you like?--golfing--and cards--and parties--and the girl you were engaged to--and take to slumming, and that kind of thing?"

The slight inflection of the last words drew smiles. Mr. Ferrier held up a finger.

"Miss Alicia, I shall lend you no more books."

"Why? Because I can't appreciate them?"

Mr. Ferrier laughed.

"I maintain that book is a book to melt the heart of a stone."

"Well, I tried to cry," said the girl, putting another grape into her mouth, and quietly nodding at her interlocutor--"I did--honor bright. But--really--what does it matter what your father did?"

"My dear!" said Lady Lucy, softly. Her singularly white and finely wrinkled face, framed in a delicate capote of old lace, looked coldly at the speaker.

"By-the-way," said Mr. Ferrier, "does not the question rather concern you in this neighborhood? I hear young Brenner has just come to live at West Hill. I don't now what sort of a youth he is, but if he's a decent fellow, I don't imagine anybody will boycott him on account of his father's misdoings."

He referred to one of the worst financial scandals of the preceding generation. Lady Lucy made no answer, but any one closely observing her might have noticed a sudden and sharp stiffening of the lips, which was in truth her reply.

"Oh, you can always ask a man like that to garden-parties!" said a shrill, distant voice. The group round the table turned. The remark was made by old Lady Niton, who sat enthroned in an arm-chair near the fire, sometimes knitting, and sometimes observing her neighbors with a malicious eye.

"Anything's good enough, isn't it, for garden-parties?" said Mrs. Fotheringham, with a little sneer.

Lady Niton's face kindled. "Let us be Radicals, my dear," she said, briskly, "but not hypocrites. Garden-parties are invaluable--for people you can't ask into the house. By-the-way, wasn't it you, Oliver, who scolded me last night, because I said somebody wasn't 'in Society'?"

"You said it of a particular hero of mine," laughed Marsham. "I naturally pitied Society."

"What is Society? Where is it?" said Sir James Chide, contemptuously. "I suppose Lady Palmerston knew."

The famous lawyer sat a little apart from the rest. Diana, who had only caught his name, and knew nothing else of him, looked with sudden interest at the man's great brow and haughty look. Lady Niton shook her head emphatically.

"We know quite as well as she did. Society is just as strong and just as exclusive as it ever was. But it is clever enough now to hide the fact from outsiders."

"I am afraid we must agree that standards have been much relaxed," said Lady Lucy.

"Not at all--not at all!" cried Lady Niton. "There were black sheep then; and there are black sheep now."

Lady Lucy held her own.

"I am sure that people take less care in their invitations," she said, with soft obstinacy. "I have often heard my mother speak of society in her young days,--how the dear Queen's example purified it--and how much less people bowed down to money then than now."

"Ah, that was before the Americans and the Jews," said Sir James Chide.

"People forget their responsibility," said Lady Lucy, turning to Diana, and speaking so as not to be heard by the whole table. "In old days it was birth; but now--now when we are all democratic--it should be character.--Don't you agree with me?"

"Other people's character?" asked Diana.

"Oh, we mustn't be unkind, of course. But when a thing is notorious. Take this young Brenner. His father's frauds ruined hundreds of poor people. How can I receive him here, as if nothing had happened? It ought not to be forgotten. He himself ought to wish to live quietly!"

Diana gave a hesitating assent, adding: "But I'm sorry for Mr. Brenner!"

Mr. Ferrier, as she spoke, leaned slightly across the tea-table as though to listen to what she said. Lady Lucy moved away, and Mr. Ferrier, after spending a moment of quiet scrutiny on the young mistress of Beechcote, came to sit beside her.

Mrs. Fotheringham threw herself back in her chair with a little yawn. "Mamma is more difficult than the Almighty!" she said, in a loud aside to Sir James Chide. "One sin--or even somebody else's sin--and you are done for."

Sir James, who was a Catholic, and scrupulous in speech, pursed his lips slightly, drummed on the table with his fingers, and finally rose without reply, and betook himself to the Times. Miss Drake meanwhile had been carried off to play billiards at the farther end of the hall by the young men of the party. It might have been noticed that, before she went, she had spent a few minutes of close though masked observation of her cousin Oliver's new friend. Also, that she tried to carry Oliver Marsham with her, but unsuccessfully. He had returned to Diana's neighborhood, and stood leaning over a chair beside her, listening to her conversation with Mr. Ferrier.

His sister, Mrs. Fotheringham, was not content to listen. Diana's impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear, evidently roused her pugnacity. She threw herself on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish--bores, in fact, of the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in. He showed himself possessed of a sharper and more caustic tongue than Diana had yet suspected. His sister's sallies only amused him, and sometimes he improved on them, with epithets or comments, shrewder than hers indeed, but quite as biting.

"His neighbors and constituents!" thought Diana, in a young astonishment. "The people who send him to Parliament!"

Mr. Ferrier seemed to become aware of her surprise and disapproval, for he once or twice threw in a satirical word or two, at the expense, not of the criticised, but of the critics. The well-known Leader of the Opposition was a stout man of middle height, with a round head and face, at first sight wholly undistinguished, an ample figure, and smooth, straight hair. But there was so much honesty and acuteness in the eyes, so much humor in the mouth, and so much kindness in the general aspect, that Diana felt herself at once attracted; and when the master of the house was summoned by his head gamekeeper to give directions for the shooting-party of the following day, and Mrs. Fotheringham had gone off to attend what seemed to be a vast correspondence, the politician and the young girl fell into a conversation which soon became agreeable and even absorbing to both. Mrs. Colwood, sitting on the other side of the hall, timidly discussing fancy work with the Miss Varleys, Lady Lucy's young nieces, saw that Diana was making a conquest; and it seemed to her, moreover, that Mr. Ferrier's scrutiny of his companion was somewhat more attentive and more close than was quite explained by the mere casual encounter of a man of middle-age with a young and charming girl. Was he--like herself--aware that matters of moment might be here at their beginning?

Meanwhile, if Mr. Ferrier was making discoveries, so was Diana. A man, it appeared, could be not only one of the busiest and most powerful politicians in England, but also a philosopher, and a reader, one whose secret tastes were as unworldly and romantic as her own. Books, music, art--he could handle these subjects no less skilfully than others political or personal. And, throughout, his deference to a young and pretty woman was never at fault. Diana was encouraged to talk, and then, without a word of flattery, given to understand that her talk pleased. Under this stimulus, her soft dark beauty was soon glowing at its best; innocence, intelligence, and youth, spread as it were their tendrils to the sun.

Meanwhile, Sir James Chide, a few yards off, was apparently absorbed partly in the Times, partly in the endeavor to make Lady Lucy's fox terrier go through its tricks.

Once Mr. Ferrier drew Diana's attention to her neighbor.

"You know him?"

"I never saw him before."

"You know who he is?"

"Ought I?--I am so sorry!"

"He is perhaps the greatest criminal advocate we have. And a very distinguished politician too.--Whenever our party comes in, he will be in the Cabinet.--You must make him talk this evening."

"I?" said Diana, laughing and blushing.

"You can!" smiled Mr. Ferrier. "Witness how you have been making me chatter! But I think I read you right? You do not mind if one chatters?--if one gives you information?"

"Mind!--How could I be anything but grateful? It puzzles me so--this--" she hesitated.

"This English life?--especially the political life? Well!--let me be your guide. I have been in it for a long while."

Diana thanked him, and rose.

"You want your room?" he asked her, kindly.--"Mrs. Fotheringham, I think, is in the drawing-room. Let me take you to her. But, first, look at two or three of these pictures as you go."

"These--pictures?" faltered Diana, looking round her, her tone changing.

"Oh, not those horrible frescos! Those were perpetrated by Marsham's father. They represent, as you see, the different processes of the Iron Trade. Old Henry Marsham liked them, because, as he said, they explained him, and the house. Oliver would like to whitewash them--but for filial piety. People might suppose him ashamed of his origin. No, no!--I mean those two or three old pictures at the end of the room. Come and look at them--they are on our way."

He led her to inspect them. They proved to be two Gainsboroughs and a Raeburn, representing ancestors on Lady Lucy's side. Mr. Ferrier's talk of them showed his intimate knowledge both of Varleys and Marshams, the knowledge rather of a kinsman than a friend. Diana perceived, indeed, how great must be the affection, the intimacy, between him and them.

Meanwhile, as the man of fifty and the slender girl in black passed before him, on their way to examine the pictures, Sir James Chide, casually looking up, was apparently struck by some rapid and powerful impression. It arrested the hand playing with the dog; it held and transformed the whole man. His eyes, open as though in astonishment or pain, followed every movement of Diana, scrutinized every look and gesture. His face had flushed slightly--his lips were parted. He had the aspect of one trying eagerly, passionately, to follow up some clew that would not unwind itself; and every now and then he bent forward--listening--trying to catch her voice.

Presently the inspection was over. Diana turned and beckoned to Mrs. Colwood. The two ladies went toward the drawing-room, Mr. Ferrier showing the way.

When he returned to the hall, Sir James Chide, its sole occupant, was walking up and down.

"Who was that young lady?" said Sir James, turning abruptly.

"Isn't she charming? Her name is Mallory--and she has just settled at Beechcote, near here. That small fair lady was her companion. Oliver tells me she is an orphan--well off--with no kith or kin. She has just come to England, it seems, for the first time. Her father brought her up abroad away from everybody. She will have a success! But of all the little Jingoes!"

Mr. Ferrier's face expressed an amused recollection of some of Diana's speeches.

"Mallory?" said Sir James, under his breath--"Mallory?" He walked to the window, and stood looking out, his hands in his pockets.

Mr. Ferrier went up-stairs to write letters. In a few minutes the man at the window came slowly back toward the fire, staring at the ground.

"The look in the eyes!" he said to himself--"the mouth!--the voice!"

He stood by the vast and pompous fireplace--hanging over the blaze--the prey of some profound agitation, some flooding onset of memory. Servants passed and repassed through the hall; sounds loud and merry came from the drawing-room. Sir James neither saw nor heard.

CHAPTER III

Alicia Drake--a vision of pale pink--had just appeared in the long gallery at Tallyn, on her way to dinner. Her dress, her jewels, and all her minor appointments were of that quality and perfection to which only much thought and plentiful money can attain. She had not, in fact, been romancing in that account of her afternoon which has been already quoted. Dress was her weapon and her stock in trade; it was, she said, necessary to her "career." And on this plea she steadily exacted in its support a proportion of the family income which left but small pickings for the schooling of her younger brothers and the allowances of her two younger sisters. But so great were the indulgence and the pride of her parents--small Devonshire land-owners living on an impoverished estate--that Alicia's demands were conceded without a murmur. They themselves were insignificant folk, who had, in their own opinion, failed in life; and most of their children seemed to them to possess the same ineffective qualities--or the same absence of qualities--as themselves. But Alicia represented their one chance of something brilliant and interesting, something to lift them above their neighbors and break up the monotony of their later lives. Their devotion was a strange mixture of love and selfishness; at any rate, Alicia could always feel, and did always feel, that she was playing her family's game as well as her own.

Her own game, of course, came first. She was not a beauty, in the sense in which Diana Mallory was a beauty; and of that fact she had been perfectly aware after her first apparently careless glance at the new-comer of the afternoon. But she had points that never failed to attract notice: a free and rather insolent carriage, audaciously beautiful eyes, a general roundness and softness, and a grace--unfailing, deliberate, and provocative, even in actions, morally, the most graceless--that would have alone secured her the "career" on which she was bent.

Of her mental qualities, one of the most profitable was a very shrewd power of observation. As she swept slowly along the corridor, which overlooked the hall at Tallyn, none of the details of the house were lost upon her. Tallyn was vast, ugly--above all, rich. Henry Marsham, the deceased husband of Lady Lucy and father of Oliver and Mrs. Fotheringham, had made an enormous fortune in the Iron Trade of the north, retiring at sixty that he might enjoy some of those pleasures of life for which business had left him too little time. One of these pleasures was building. Henry Marsham had spent ten years in building Tallyn, and at the end of that time, feeling it impossible to live in the huge incoherent place he had created, he hired a small villa at Nice and went to die there in privacy and peace. Nevertheless, his will laid strict injunctions upon his widow to inhabit and keep up Tallyn; injunctions backed by considerable sanctions of a financial kind. His will, indeed, had been altogether a document of some eccentricity; though as eight years had now elapsed since his death, the knowledge of its provisions possessed by outsiders had had time to grow vague. Still, there were strong general impressions abroad, and as Alicia Drake surveyed the house which the old man had built to be the incubus of his descendants, some of them teased her mind. It was said, for instance, that Oliver Marsham and his sister only possessed pittances of about a thousand a year apiece, while Tallyn, together with the vast bulk of Henry Marsham's fortune, had been willed to Lady Lucy, and lay, moreover, at her absolute disposal. Was this so, or no? Miss Drake's curiosity, for some time past, would have been glad to be informed.

Meanwhile, here was the house--about which there was no mystery--least of all, as to its cost. Interminable broad corridors, carpeted with ugly Brussels and suggesting a railway hotel, branched out before Miss Drake's eyes in various directions; upon them opened not bedrooms but "suites," as Mr. Marsham père had loved to call them, of which the number was legion, while the bachelors' wing alone would have lodged a regiment. Every bedroom was like every other, except for such variations as Tottenham Court Road, rioting at will, could suggest. Copies in marble or bronze of well-known statues ranged along the corridors--a forlorn troupe of nude and shivering divinities. The immense hall below, with its violent frescos and its brand-new Turkey carpets, was panelled in oak, from which some device of stain or varnish had managed to abstract every particle of charm. A whole oak wood, indeed, had been lavished on the swathing and sheathing of the house, With the only result that the spectator beheld it steeped in a repellent yellow-brown from top to toe, against which no ornament, no piece of china, no picture, even did they possess some individual beauty, could possibly make it prevail.

And the drawing-room! As Alicia Drake advanced alone into its empty and blazing magnificence she could only laugh in its face--so eager and restless was the effort which it made, and so hopeless the defeat. Enormous mirrors, spread on white and gold walls; large copies from Italian pictures, collected by Henry Marsham in Rome; more facile statues holding innumerable lights; great pieces of modern china painted with realistic roses and poppies; crimson carpets, gilt furniture, and flaring cabinets--Miss Drake frowned as she looked at it. "What could be done with it?" she said to herself, walking slowly up and down, and glancing from side to side--"What could be done with it?"

A rustle in the hall announced another guest. Mrs. Fotheringham entered. Marsham's sister dressed with severity; and as she approached her cousin she put up her eye-glass for what was evidently a hostile inspection of the dazzling effect presented by the young lady. But Alicia was not afraid of Mrs. Fotheringham.

"How early we are!" she said, still quietly looking at the reflection of herself in the mirror over the mantel-piece and warming a slender foot at the fire. "Haven't some more people arrived, Cousin Isabel? I thought I heard a carriage while I was dressing."

"Yes; Miss Vincent and three men came by the late train."

"All Labor members?" asked Alicia, with a laugh.

Mrs. Fotheringham explained, with some tartness, that only one of the three was a Labor member--Mr. Barton. Of the other two, one was Edgar Frobisher, the other Mr. McEwart, a Liberal M.P., who had just won a hotly contested bye-election. At the name of Edgar Frobisher, Miss Drake's countenance showed some animation. She inquired if he had been doing anything madder than usual. Mrs. Fotheringham replied, without enthusiasm, that she knew nothing about his recent doings--nor about Mr. McEwart, who was said, however, to be of the right stuff. Mr. Barton, on the other hand, "is a great friend of mine--and a most remarkable man. Oliver has been very lucky to get him."

Alicia inquired whether he was likely to appear in dress clothes.

"Certainly not. He never does anything out of keeping with his class--and he knows that we lay no stress on that kind of thing." This, with another glance at the elegant Paris frock which adorned the person of Alicia--a frock, in Mrs. Fotheringham's opinion, far too expensive for the girl's circumstances. Alicia received the glance without flinching. It was one of her good points that she was never meek with the people who disliked her. She merely threw out another inquiry as to "Miss Vincent."

"One of mamma's acquaintances. She was a private secretary to some one mamma knows, and she is going to do some work for Oliver when the session begins.

"Didn't Oliver tell me she is a Socialist?"

Mrs. Fotheringham believed it might be said.

"How Miss Mallory will enjoy herself!" said Alicia, with a little laugh.

"Have you been talking to Oliver about her?" Mrs. Fotheringham stared rather hard at her cousin.

"Of course. Oliver likes her."

"Oliver likes a good many people."

"Oh no, Cousin Isabel! Oliver likes very few people--very, very few," said Miss Drake, decidedly, looking down into the fire.

"I don't know why you give Oliver such an unamiable character! In my opinion, he is often not so much on his guard as I should like to see him."

"Oh, well, we can't all be as critical as you, dear Cousin Isabel! But, anyway, Oliver admires Miss Mallory extremely. We can all see that."

The girl turned a steady face on her companion. Mrs. Fotheringham was conscious of a certain secret admiration. But her own point of view had nothing to do with Miss Drake's.

"It amuses him to talk to her," she said, sharply; "I am sure I hope it won't come to anything more. It would be very unsuitable."

"Why? Politics? Oh! that doesn't matter a bit."

"I beg your pardon. Oliver is becoming an important man, and it will never do for him to hamper himself with a wife who cannot sympathize with any of his enthusiasms and ideals."

Miss Drake shrugged her shoulders.

"He would convert her--and he likes triumphing. Oh! Cousin Isabel!--look at that lamp!"

An oil lamp in an inner drawing-room, placed to illuminate an easel portrait of Lady Lucy, was smoking atrociously. The two ladies' flew toward it, and were soon lost to sight and hearing amid a labyrinth of furniture and palms.

The place they left vacant was almost immediately filled by Oliver Marsham himself, who came in studying a pencilled paper, containing the names of the guests. He and his mother had not found the dinner very easy to arrange. Upon his heels followed Mr. Ferrier, who hurried to the fire, rubbing his hands and complaining of the cold.

"I never felt this house cold before. Has anything happened to your calorifère? These rooms are too big! By-the-way, Oliver"--Mr. Ferrier turned his back to the blaze, and looked round him--"when are you going to reform this one?"

Oliver surveyed it.

"Of course I should like nothing better than to make a bonfire of it all! But mother--"

"Of course--of course! Ah, well, perhaps when you marry, my dear boy! Another reason for making haste!"

The older man turned a laughing eye on his companion. Marsham merely smiled, a little vaguely, without reply. Ferrier observed him, then began abstractedly to study the carpet. After a moment he looked up--

"I like your little friend, Oliver--I like her particularly!"

"Miss Mallory? Yes, I saw you had been making acquaintance. Well?"

His voice affected a light indifference, but hardly succeeded.

"A very attractive personality!--fresh and womanly--no nonsense--heart enough for a dozen. But all the same the intellect is hungry, and wants feeding. No one will ever succeed with her, Oliver, who forgets she has a brain. Ah! here she is!"

For the door had been thrown open, and Diana entered, followed by Mrs. Colwood. She came in slowly, her brow slightly knit, and her black eyes touched with the intent seeking look which was natural to them. Her dress of the freshest simplest white fell about her in plain folds. It made the same young impression as the childish curls on the brow and temples, and both men watched her with delight, Marsham went to meet her.

"Will you sit on my left? I must take in Lady Niton."

Diana smiled and nodded.

"And who is to be my fate?"

"Mr. Edgar Frobisher. You will quarrel with him--and like him!"

"One of the 'Socialists'?"

"Ah--you must find out!"

He threw her a laughing backward glance as he went off to give directions to some of his other guests. The room filled up. Diana was aware of a tall young man, fair-haired, and evidently Scotch, whom she had not seen before, and then of a girl, whose appearance and dress riveted her attention. She was thin and small--handsome, but for a certain strained emaciated air, a lack of complexion and of bloom. But her blue eyes, black-lashed and black-browed, were superb; they made indeed the note, the distinction of the whole figure. The thick hair, cut short in the neck, was brushed back and held by a blue ribbon, the only trace of ornament in a singular costume, which consisted of a very simple morning dress, of some woollen material, nearly black, garnished at the throat and wrists by some plain white frills. The dress hung loosely on the girl's starved frame, the hands were long and thin, the face sallow. Yet such was the force of the eyes, the energy of the strong chin and mouth, the flashing freedom of her smile, as she stood talking to Lady Lucy, that all the ugly plainness of the dress seemed to Diana, as she watched her, merely to increase her strange effectiveness, to mark her out the more favorably from the glittering room, from Lady Lucy's satin and diamonds, or the shimmering elegance of Alicia Drake.

As she bowed to Mr. Frobisher, and took his arm amid the pairs moving toward the dining-room, Diana asked him eagerly who the lady in the dark dress might be.

"Oh! a great friend of mine," he said, pleasantly. "Isn't she splendid? Did you notice her evening dress?"

"Is it an evening dress?"

"It's her evening dress. She possesses two costumes--both made of the same stuff, only the morning one has a straight collar, and the evening one has frills."

"She doesn't think it right to dress like other people?"

"Well--she has very little money, and what she has she can't afford to spend on dress. No--I suppose she doesn't think it right."

By this time they were settled at table, and Diana, convinced that she had found one of the two Socialists promised her, looked round for the other. Ah! there he was, beside Mrs. Fotheringham--who was talking to him with an eagerness rarely vouchsafed to her acquaintances. A powerful, short-necked man, in the black Sunday coat of the workman, with sandy hair, blunt features, and a furrowed brow--he had none of the magnetism, the strange refinement of the lady in the frills. Diana drew a long breath.

"How odd it all is!" she said, as though to herself.

Her companion looked at her with amusement.

"What is odd? The combination of this house--with Barton--and Miss Vincent?"

"Why do they consent to come here?" she asked, wondering. "I suppose they despise the rich."

"Not at all! The poor things--the rich--can't help themselves--just yet. We come here--because we mean to use the rich."

"You!--you too?"

"A Fabian--" he said, smiling. "Which means that I am not in such a hurry as Barton."

"To ruin your country? You would only murder her by degrees?"--flashed Diana.

"Ah!--you throw down the glove?--so soon? Shall we postpone it for a course or two? I am no use till I have fed."

Diana laughed. They fell into a gossip about their neighbors. The plain young man, with a shock of fair hair, a merry eye, a short chin, and the spirits of a school-boy, sitting on Lady Niton's left, was, it seemed, the particular pet and protégé of that masterful old lady. Diana remembered to have seen him at tea-time in Miss Drake's train. Lady Niton, she was told, disliked her own sons, but was never tired of befriending two or three young men who took her fancy. Bobbie Forbes was a constant frequenter of her house on Campden Hill. "But he is no toady. He tells her a number of plain truths--and amuses her guests. In return she provides him with what she calls 'the best society'--and pushes his interests in season and out of season. He is in the Foreign Office, and she is at present manoeuvring to get him attached to the Special Mission which is going out to Constantinople."

Diana glanced across the table, and in doing so met the eyes of Mr. Bobbie Forbes, which laughed into hers--involuntarily--as much as to say--"You see my plight?--ridiculous, isn't it?"

For Lady Niton was keeping a greedy conversational hold on both Marsham and the young man, pouncing to right or left, as either showed a disposition to escape from it--so that Forbes was violently withheld from Alicia Drake, his rightful lady, and Marsham could engage in no consecutive conversation with Diana.

"No escape for you!" smiled Mr. Frobisher, presently, observing the position. "Lady Niton always devastates a dinner-party."

Diana protested that she was quite content. Might she assume, after the fourth course, that his hunger was at least scotched and conversation thrown open?

"I am fortified--thank you. Shall we go back to where we left off? You had just accused me of ruining the country?"

"By easy stages," said Diana. "Wasn't that where we had come to? But first--tell me, because it's all so puzzling!--do you and Mr. Marsham agree?"

"A good deal. But he thinks he can use us--which is his mistake."

"And Mr. Ferrier?"

Mr. Frobisher shook his head good-humoredly.

"No, no!--Ferrier is a Whig--the Whig of to-day, bien entendu, who is a very different person from the Whig of yesterday--still, a Whig, an individualist, a moderate man. He leads the Liberal party--and it is changing all the time under his hand into something he dreads and detests. The party can't do without him now--but--"

He paused, smiling.

"It will shed him some day?"

"It must!"

"And where will Mr. Marsham be then?"

"On the winning side--I think."

The tone was innocent and careless; but the words offended her.

She drew herself up a little.

"He would never betray his friends!"

"Certainly not," said Mr. Frobisher, hastily; "I didn't mean that. But Marsham has a mind more open, more elastic, more modern than Ferrier--great man as he is."

Diana was silent. She seemed still to hear some of the phrases and inflections of Mr. Ferrier's talk of the afternoon. Mr. Frobisher's prophecy wounded some new-born sympathy in her. She turned the conversation.

With Oliver Marsham she talked when she could, as Lady Niton allowed her. She succeeded, at least, in learning something more of her right-hand neighbor and of Miss Vincent. Mr. Frobisher, it appeared, was a Fellow of Magdalen, and was at present lodging in Limehouse, near the docks, studying poverty and Trade-unionism, and living upon a pound a week. As for Miss Vincent, in her capacity of secretary to a well-known Radical member of Parliament, she had been employed, for his benefit, in gathering information first-hand, very often in the same fields where Mr. Frobisher was at work. This brought them often together--and they were the best of comrades, and allies.

Diana's eyes betrayed her curiosity; she seemed to be asking for clews in a strange world. Marsham apparently felt that nothing could be more agreeable than to guide her. He began to describe for her the life of such a woman of the people as Marion Vincent. An orphan at fourteen, earning her own living from the first; self-dependent, self-protected; the friend, on perfectly equal terms, of a group of able men, interested in the same social ideals as herself; living alone, in contempt of all ordinary conventions, now in Kensington or Belgravia, and now in a back street of Stepney, or Poplar, and equally at home and her own mistress in both; exacting from a rich employer the full market value of the services she rendered him, and refusing to accept the smallest gift or favor beyond; a convinced Socialist and champion of the poor, who had within the past twelve months, to Marsham's knowledge, refused an offer of marriage from a man of large income, passionately devoted to her, whom she liked--mainly, it was believed, because his wealth was based on sweated labor: such was the character sketched by Marsham for his neighbor in the intermittent conversation, which was all that Lady Niton allowed him.

Diana listened silently, but inwardly her mind was full of critical reactions. Was this what Mr. Marsham most admired, his ideal of what a woman should be? Was he exalting, exaggerating it a little, by way of antithesis to those old-fashioned surroundings, that unreal atmosphere, as he would call it, in which, for instance, he had found her--Diana--at Rapallo--under her father's influence and bringing up? The notion spurred her pride as well as her loyalty to her father. She began to hold herself rather stiffly, to throw in a critical remark or two, to be a little flippant even, at Miss Vincent's expense. Homage so warm laid at the feet of one ideal was--she felt it--a disparagement of others; she stood for those others; and presently Marsham began to realize a hurtling of shafts in the air, an incipient battle between them.

He accepted it with delight. Still the same poetical, combative, impulsive creature, with the deep soft voice! She pleased his senses; she stirred his mind; and he would have thrown himself into one of the old Rapallo arguments with her then and there but for the gad-fly at his elbow.

Immediately after dinner Lady Niton possessed herself of Diana. "Come here, please, Miss Mallory! I wish to make your acquaintance," Thus commanded, the laughing but rebellious Diana allowed herself to be led to a corner of the over-illuminated drawing-room.

"Well!"--said Lady Niton, observing her--"so you have come to settle in these parts?"

Diana assented.

"What made you choose Brookshire?" The question was enforced by a pair of needle-sharp eyes. "There isn't a person worth talking to within a radius of twenty miles."

Diana declined to agree with her; whereupon Lady Niton impatiently exclaimed: "Tut--tut! One might as well milk he-goats as talk to the people here. Nothing to be got out of any of them. Do you like conversation?"

"Immensely!"

"Hum!--But mind you don't talk too much. Oliver talks a great deal more than is good for him. So you met Oliver in Italy? What do you think of him?"

Diana, keeping a grip on laughter, said something civil.

"Oh, Oliver's clever enough--and ambitious!" Lady Niton threw up her hands. "But I'll tell you what stands in his way. He says too sharp things of people. Do you notice that?"

"He is very critical," said Diana, evasively.

"Oh, Lord, much worse than that!" said Lady Niton, coolly. "He makes himself very unpopular. You should tell him so."

"That would be hardly my place." said Diana, flushing a little.

Lady Niton stared at her a moment rather hard--then said: "But he's honey and balm itself compared to Isabel! The Marshams are old friends of mine, but I don't pretend to like Isabel Fotheringham at all. She calls herself a Radical, and there's no one insists more upon their birth and their advantages than she. Don't let her bully you--come to me if she does--I'll protect you."

Diana said vaguely that Mrs. Fotheringham had been very kind.

"You haven't had time to find out," said Lady Niton, grimly. She leaned back fanning herself, her queer white face and small black eyes alive with malice. "Did you ever see such a crew as we were at dinner? I reminded Oliver of the rhyme--'The animals went in two by two.'--It's always the way here. There's no society in this house, because you can't take anything or any one for granted. One must always begin from the beginning. What can I have in common with that man Barton? The last time I talked to him, he thought Lord Grey--the Reform Bill Lord Grey--was a Tory--and had never heard of Louis Philippe. He knows nothing that we know--and what do I care about his Socialist stuff?--Well, now--Alicia"--her tone changed--"do you admire Alicia?"

Diana, in discomfort, glanced through the archway, leading to the inner drawing-room, which framed the sparkling figure of Miss Drake--and murmured a complimentary remark.

"No!"--said Lady Niton, with emphasis; "no--she's not handsome--though she makes people believe she is. You'll see--in five years. Of course the stupid men admire her, and she plays her cards very cleverly; but--my dear!"--suddenly the formidable old woman bent forward, and tapped Diana's arm with her fan--"let me give you a word of advice. Don't be too innocent here--or too amiable. Don't give yourself away--especially to Alicia!"

Diana had the disagreeable feeling of being looked through and through, physically and mentally; though at the same time she was only very vaguely conscious as to what there might be either for Lady Niton or Miss Drake to see.

"Thank you very much," she said, trying to laugh it off. "It is very kind of you to warn me--but really I don't think you need." She looked round her waveringly.

"May I introduce you to my friend? Mrs. Colwood--Lady Niton." For her glance of appeal had brought Mrs. Colwood to her aid, and between them they coped with this enfant terrible among dowagers till the gentlemen came in.

"Here is Sir James Childe," said Lady Niton, rising. "He wants to talk to you, and he don't like me. So I'll go."

Sir James, not without a sly smile, discharged arrow-like at the retreating enemy, took the seat she had vacated.

"This is your first visit to Tallyn, Miss Mallory?"

The voice speaking was the voix d'or familiar to Englishmen in many a famous case, capable of any note, any inflection, to which sarcasm or wrath, shrewdness or pathos, might desire to tune it. In this case it was gentleness itself; and so was the countenance he turned upon Diana. Yet it was a countenance built rather for the sterner than the milder uses of life. A natural majesty expressed itself in the domed forehead, and in the fine head, lightly touched with gray; the eyes too were gray, the lips prominent and sensitive, the face long, and, in line, finely regular. A face of feeling and of power; the face of a Celt, disciplined by the stress and conflict of a non-Celtic world. Diana's young sympathies sprang to meet it, and they were soon in easy conversation.

Sir James questioned her kindly, but discreetly. This was really her first visit to Brookshire?

"To England!" said Diana; and then, on a little wooing, came out the girl's first impressions, natural, enthusiastic, gay. Sir James listened, with eyes half-closed, following every movement of her lips, every gesture of head and hand.

"Your parents took you abroad quite as a child?"

"I went with my father. My mother died when I was quite small."

Sir James did not speak for a moment. At last he said:

"But before you went abroad, you lived in London?"

"Yes--in Kensington Square."

Sir James made a sudden movement which displaced a book on a little table beside him. He stooped to pick it up.

"And your father was tired of England?"

Diana hesitated--

"I--I think he had gone through great trouble. He never got over mamma's death."

"Oh yes, I see," said Sir James, gently. Then, in another tone:

"So you settled on that beautiful coast? I wonder if that was the winter I first saw Italy?"

He named the year.

"Yes--that was the year," said Diana. "Had you never seen Italy before that?" She looked at him in a little surprise.

"Do I seem to you so old?" said Sir James, smiling. "I had been a very busy man, Miss Mallory, and my holidays had been generally spent in Ireland. But that year"--he paused a moment--"that year I had been ill, and the doctors sent me abroad--in October," he added, slowly and precisely. "I went first to Paris, and I was at Genoa in November."

"We must have been there--just about then! Mamma died in October. And I remember the winter was just beginning at Genoa--it was very cold--and I got bronchitis--I was only a little thing."

"And Oliver tells me you found a home at Portofino?"

Diana replied. He kept her talking; yet her impression was that he did not listen very much to what she said. At the same time she felt herself studied, in a way which made her self-conscious, which perhaps she might have resented in any man less polished and less courteous.

"Pardon me--" he said, abruptly, at a pause in the conversation. "Your name interests me particularly. It is Welsh, is it not? I knew two or three persons of that name; and they were Welsh."

Diana's look changed a little.

"Yes, it is Welsh," she said, in a hesitating, reserved voice; and then looked round her as though in search of a change of topic.

Sir James bent forward.

"May I come and see you some day at Beechcote?"

Diana flushed with surprise and pleasure.

"Oh! I should be so honored!"

"The honor would be mine," he said, with pleasant deference. "Now I think I see that Marsham is wroth with me for monopolizing you like this."

He rose and walked away, just as Marsham brought up Mr. Barton to introduce him to Diana.

Sir James wandered on into a small drawing-room at the end of the long suite of rooms; in its seclusion he turned back to look at the group he had left behind. His face, always delicately pale, had grown strained and white.

"Is it possible"--he said to himself--"that she knows nothing?--that that man was able to keep it all from her?"

He walked up and down a little by himself--pondering--the prey of the same emotion as had seized him in the afternoon; till at last his ear was caught by some hubbub, some agitation in the big drawing-room, especially by the sound of the girlish voice he had just been listening to, only speaking this time in quite another key. He returned to see what was the matter.

He found Miss Mallory the centre of a circle of spectators and listeners, engaged apparently in a three-cornered and very hot discussion with Mr. Barton, the Socialist member, and Oliver Marsham. Diana had entirely forgotten herself, her shyness, the strange house, and all her alarms. If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton. He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the "wild-cat" and "Jingo" policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding. News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost. Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon. It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more decisive--so as to show all the world into what a hornet's nest the Government was going--"and a hornet's nest which will cost us half a million to take before we've done."

Diana's cheeks flamed. Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more English lives had been lost?

Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse, bloodshed might have been saved in the end. A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo press could only be stopped by disaster--

On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by disaster. Disaster must be retrieved.

Mr. Barton asked her--why? Were we never to admit that we were in the wrong?

The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong. And prestige had to be maintained.

At the word "prestige" the rugged face of the Labor member grew contemptuous and a little angry. He dealt with it as he was accustomed to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament. His touch in doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought, required plain speaking.

But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable antagonist. Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section to which he belonged.

He began to stumble and to make mistakes--gross elementary mistakes in geography and fact--and there-with to lose his temper. Diana was upon him in a moment--very cool and graceful--controlling herself well; and it is probable that she would have won the day triumphantly but for the sudden intervention of her host.

Oliver Marsham had been watching her with mingled amusement and admiration. The slender figure held defiantly erect, the hands close-locked on the knee, the curly head with the air of a Niké--he could almost see the palm branch in the hand, the white dress and the silky hair, blown back by the blasts of victory!--appealed to a rhetorical element in his nature always closely combined both with his feelings and his ambitions. Headlong energy and partisanship--he was enchanted to find how beautiful they could be, and he threw himself into the discussion simply--at first--that he might prolong an emotion, might keep the red burning on her lip and cheek. That blundering fellow Barton should not have it all to himself!

But he was no sooner well in it than he too began to flounder. He rode off upon an inaccurate telegram in a morning paper; Diana fell upon it at once, tripped it up, exposed it, drove it from the field, while Mr. Ferrier approved her from the background with a smiling eye and a quietly applauding hand. Then Marsham quoted a speech in the Indian Council.

Diana dismissed it with contempt, as the shaft of a frondeur discredited by both parties. He fell back on Blue Books, and other ponderosities--Barton by this time silent, or playing a clumsy chorus. But if Diana was not acquainted with these things in the ore, so to speak, she was more than a little acquainted with the missiles that could be forged from them. That very afternoon Hugh Roughsedge had pointed her to some of the best. She took them up--a little wildly now--for her coolness was departing--and for a time Marsham could hardly keep his footing.

A good many listeners were by now gathered round the disputants. Lady Niton, wielding some noisy knitting needles by the fireside, was enjoying the fray all the more that it seemed to be telling against Oliver. Mrs. Fotheringham, on the other hand, who came up occasionally to the circle, listened and went away again, was clearly seething with suppressed wrath, and had to be restrained once or twice by her brother from interfering, in a tone which would at once have put an end to a duel he himself only wished to prolong.

Mr. Ferrier perceived her annoyance, and smiled over it. In spite of his long friendship with the family, Isabel Fotheringham was no favorite with the great man. She had long seemed to him a type--a strange and modern type--of the feminine fanatic who allows political difference to interfere not only with private friendship but with the nearest and most sacred ties; and his philosopher's soul revolted. Let a woman talk politics, if she must, like this eager idealist girl--not with the venom and gall of the half-educated politician. "As if we hadn't enough of that already!"

Other spectators paid more frivolous visits to the scene. Bobbie Forbes and Alicia Drake, attracted by the sounds of war, looked in from the next room. Forbes listened a moment, shrugged his shoulders, made a whistling mouth, and then walked off to a glass bookcase--the one sign of civilization in the vast room--where he was soon absorbed in early editions of English poets, Lady Lucy's inheritance from a literary father. Alicia moved about, a little restless and scornful, now listening unwillingly, and now attempting diversions. But in these she found no one to second her, not even the two pink-and-white nieces of Lady Lucy, who did not understand a word of what was going on, but were none the less gazing open-mouthed at Diana.

Marion Vincent meanwhile had drawn nearer to Diana. Her strong significant face wore a quiet smile; there was a friendly, even an admiring penetration in the look with which she watched the young prophetess of Empire and of War. As for Lady Lucy, she was silent, and rather grave. In her secret mind she thought that young girls should not be vehement or presumptuous. It was a misfortune that this pretty creature had not been more reasonably brought up; a mother's hand had been wanting. While not only Mr. Ferrier and Mrs. Colwood, sitting side by side in the background, but everybody else present, in some measure or degree, was aware of some play of feeling in the scene, beyond and behind the obvious, some hidden forces, or rather, perhaps, some emerging relation, which gave it significance and thrill. The duel was a duel of brains--unequal at that; what made it fascinating was the universal or typical element in the clash of the two personalities--the man using his whole strength, more and more tyrannously, more and more stubbornly--the girl resisting, flashing, appealing, fighting for dear life, now gaining, now retreating--and finally overborne.

For Marsham's staying powers, naturally, were the greater. He summoned finally all his nerve and all his knowledge. The air of the carpet-knight with which he had opened battle disappeared; he fought seriously and for victory. And suddenly Diana laughed--a little hysterically--and gave in. He had carried her into regions of history and politics where she could not follow. She dropped her head in her hands a moment--then fell back in her chair--silenced--her beautiful passionate eyes fixed on Marsham, as his were on her.

"Brava! Brava!" cried Mr. Ferrier, clapping his hands. The room joined in laughter and applause.

A few minutes later the ladies streamed out into the hall on their way to bed. Marsham came to light a candle for Diana.

"Do you forgive me?" he said, as he gave it to her.

The tone was gay and apologetic.

She laughed unsteadily, without reply.

"When will you take your revenge?"

She shook her head, touched his hand for "good-night," and went up-stairs.

As Diana reached her room she drew Mrs. Colwood in with her--but not, it seemed, for purposes of conversation. She stood absently by the fire taking off her bracelets and necklace. Mrs. Colwood made a few remarks about the evening and the guests, with little response, and presently wondered why she was detained. At last Diana put up her hands, and smoothed back the hair from her temples with a long sigh. Then she laid a sudden grasp upon Mrs. Colwood, and looked earnestly and imploringly into her face.

"Will you--please--call me Diana? And--and--will you kiss me?"

She humbly stooped her head. Mrs. Colwood, much touched, threw her arms around her, and kissed her heartily. Then a few warm words fell from her--as to the scene of the evening. Diana withdrew herself at once, shivering a little.

"Oh, I want papa!" she said--"I want him so much!"

And she hid her eyes against the mantel-piece.

Mrs. Colwood soothed her affectionately, perhaps expecting some outburst of confidence, which, however, did not come. Diana said a quiet "good-night," and they parted.

But it was long before Mrs. Colwood could sleep. Was the emotion she had just witnessed--flinging itself geyserlike into sight, only to sink back as swiftly out of ken--was it an effect of the past or an omen of the future? The longing expressed in the girl's heart and voice, after the brave show she had made--had it overpowered her just because she felt herself alone, without natural protectors, on the brink of her woman's destiny?

CHAPTER IV

The next day, when Diana looked out from her window, she saw a large and dreary park wrapped in scudding rain which promised evil things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in many cases a sickly and invalided air; and elaborate contrasts in dark and light foliage had been arranged by the landscape-gardener employed. Dark plantations had a light border--light plantations a dark one. A lake or large pond, with concrete banks and two artificial islands, held the centre of the park, and on the monotonous stretches of immaculate grass there were deer to be seen wherever anybody could reasonably expect them.

Diana surveyed it all with a lively dislike. She pitied Lady Lucy and Mr. Marsham because they must live in such a place. Especially, surely, must it be hampering and disconcerting to a man, preaching the democratic gospel, and looking forward to the democratic millennium, to be burdened with a house and estate which could offer so few excuses for the wealth of which they made an arrogant and uninviting display. Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals the most different or remote. But here "proputty! proputty!" was the cry of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was magnificently careless of property--was, in fact, in the eyes of the lovers of property, its enemy. The house again spoke loudly and aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.

Well--a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from this point of view.

Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed. From the normal seven-hours' sleep of youth she had awakened with braced nerves. To remember her duel of the night before was no longer to thrill with an excitement inexplicable even to herself, and strangely mingled with a sense of loneliness or foreboding. Under the morning light she looked at things more sanely. Her natural vanity, which was the reflection of her wish to please, told her that she had not done badly. She felt a childish pleasure in the memory of Mr. Barton's discomfiture; and as to Mr. Marsham, it was she, and not her beliefs, not the great Imperial "cause" which had been beaten. How could she expect to hold her own with the professional politician when it came really to business? In her heart of hearts she knew that she would have despised Oliver Marsham if he had not been able to best her in argument. "If it had been papa," she thought, proudly, "that would have been another story!"

Nevertheless, as she sat meekly under the hands of her maid, smiles "went out and in," as she remembered the points where she had pressed him hard, had almost overcome him. An inclination to measure herself with him again danced within her. Will against will, mind against mind--her temperament, in its morning rally, delighted in the thought. And all the time there hovered before her the living man, with his agreeable, energetic, challenging presence. How much better she had liked him, even in his victory of the evening, than in the carping sarcastic mood of the afternoon!

In spite of gayety and expectation, however, she felt her courage fail her a little as she left her room and ventured out into the big populous house. Her solitary bringing-up had made her liable to fits of shyness amid her general expansiveness, and it was a relief to meet no one--least of all, Alicia Drake--on her way down-stairs. Mrs. Colwood, indeed, was waiting for her at the end of the passage, and Diana held her hand a little as they descended.

A male voice was speaking in the hall--Mr. Marsham giving the last directions for the day to the head keeper. The voice was sharp and peremptory--too peremptory, one might have thought, for democracy addressing a brother. But the keeper, a gray-haired, weather-beaten man of fifty, bowed himself out respectfully, and Marsham turned to greet Diana. Mrs. Colwood saw the kindling of his eyes as they fell on the girl's morning freshness. No sharpness in the voice now!--he was all eagerness to escort and serve his guests.

He led them to the breakfast-room, which seemed to be in an uproar, caused apparently by Bobbie Forbes and Lady Niton, who were talking at each other across the table.

"What is the matter?" asked Diana, as she slipped into a place to which Sir James Chide smilingly invited her--between himself and Mr. Bobbie.

Sir James, making a pretence of shutting his ears against the din, replied that he believed Mr. Forbes was protesting against the tyranny of Lady Niton in obliging him to go to church.

"She never enters a place of worship herself, but she insists that her young men friends shall go.--Mr. Bobbie is putting his foot down!"

"Miss Mallory, let me get you some fish," said Forbes, turning to her with a flushed and determined countenance. "I have now vindicated the rights of man, and am ready to attend--if you will allow me--to the wants of woman. Fish?--or bacon?"

Diana made her choice, and the young man supplied her; then bristling with victory, and surrounded by samples of whatever food the breakfast-table afforded, he sat down to his own meal. "No!" he said, with energy, addressing Diana. "One must really draw the line. The last Sunday Lady Niton took me to church, the service lasted an hour and three-quarters. I am a High Churchman--I vow I am--an out-and-outer. I go in for snippets--and shortening things. The man here is a dreadful old Erastian--piles on everything you can pile on--so I just felt it necessary to give Lady Niton notice. To-morrow I have work for the department--at home! Take my advice, Miss Mallory--don't go."

"I'm not staying over Sunday," smiled Diana.

The young man expressed his regret. "I say," he said, with a quick look round, "you didn't think I was rude last night, did you?"

"Rude? When?"

"In not listening. I can't listen when people talk politics. I want to drown myself. Now, if it was poetry--or something reasonable. You know the only things worth looking at--in this beastly house"--he lowered his voice--"are the books in that glass bookcase. It was Lady Lucy's father--old Lord Merston--collected them. Lady Lucy never looks at them. Marsham does, I suppose--sometimes. Do you know Marsham well?"

"I made acquaintance with him and Lady Lucy on the Riviera."

Mr. Bobbie observed her with a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham had been very much "smitten" with her amid the pine woods of Portofino. Marsham's taste was good--emphatically good. At the same time it was clear that the lady was no mere facile and commonplace girl. It was Forbes's opinion, based on the scene of the previous evening, that there might be a good deal of wooing to be done.

"There are so many things I wanted to show you--and to talk about!" said Oliver Marsham, confidentially, to Diana, in the hall after breakfast--"but this horrid shoot will take up all the day! If the weather is not too bad, I think some of the ladies meant to join us at luncheon. Will you venture?"

His tone was earnest; his eyes indorsed it. Diana hoped it might be possible to come. Marsham lingered beside her to the last minute; but presently final orders had to be given to keepers, and country neighbors began to arrive.

"They do the thing here on an enormous scale," said Bobbie Forbes, lounging and smoking beside Diana; "it's almost the biggest shoot in the county. Amusing, isn't it?--in this Radical house. Do you see that man McEwart?"

Diana turned her attention upon the young member of Parliament who had arrived the night before--plain, sandy-haired, with a long flat-backed head, and a gentlemanly manner.

"I suspect a good deal's going on here behind the scenes," said Bobbie, dropping his voice. "That man Barton may be a fool to talk, but he's a great power in the House with the other Labor men. And McEwart has been hand and glove with Marsham all this Session. They're trying to force Ferrier's hand. Some Bill the Labor men want--and Ferrier won't hear of. A good many people say we shall see Marsham at the head of a Fourth Party of his own very soon, Se soumettre, ou se démettre!--well, it may come to that--for old Ferrier. But I'll back him to fight his way through."

"How can Mr. Marsham oppose him?" asked Diana, in wonder, and some indignation with her companion. "He is the Leader of the party, and besides--they are such friends!"

Forbes looked rather amused at her womanish view of things. "Friends? I should rather think so!"

By this time he and Diana were strolling up and down the winter garden opening out of the hall, which was now full of a merry crowd waiting for the departure of the shooters. Suddenly Forbes paused.

"Do you see that?"

Diana's eyes followed his till they perceived Lady Lucy sitting a little way off under a camellia-tree covered with red blossom. Her lap was heaped with the letters of the morning. Mr. Ferrier, with a cigarette in his mouth, stood beside her, reading the sheets of a letter which she handed to him as she herself finished them. Every now and then she spoke to him, and he replied. In the little scene, between the slender white-haired woman and the middle-aged man, there was something so intimate, so conjugal even, that Diana involuntarily turned away as though to watch it were an impertinence.

"Rather touching, isn't it?" said the youth, smiling benevolently. "Of course you know--there's a romance, or rather was--long ago. My mother knew all about it. Since old Marsham's death, Lady Lucy's never done a thing without Ferrier to advise her. Why she hasn't married him, that's the puzzle.--But she's a curious woman, is Lady Lucy. Looks so soft, but--" He pursed up his lips with an important air.

"Anyhow, she depends a lot on Ferrier. He's constantly here whenever he can be spared from London and Parliament. He got Oliver into Parliament--his first seat I mean--for Manchester. The Ferriers are very big people up there, and old Ferrier's recommendation of him just put him in straight--no trouble about it! Oh! and before that when he was at Eton--and Oxford too--Ferrier looked after him like a father.--Used to have him up for exeats--and talk to the Head--and keep his mother straight--like an old brick. Ferrier's a splendid chap!"

Diana warmly agreed.

"Perhaps you know," pursued the chatterbox, "that this place is all hers--Lady Lucy's. She can leave it and her money exactly as she pleases. It is to be hoped she won't leave much of it to Mrs. Fotheringham. Isn't that a woman! Ah! you don't know her yet. Hullo!--there's Marsham after me."

For Marsham was beckoning from the hall. They returned hurriedly.

"Who made Oliver that waistcoat?" said Lady Niton, putting on her spectacles.

"I did," said Alicia Drake, as she came up, with her arm round the younger of Lady Niton's nieces. "Isn't it becoming?"

"Hum!" said Lady Niton, in a gruff tone, "young ladies can always find new ways of wasting their time."

Marsham approached Diana.

"We're just off," he said, smiling. "The clouds are lifting. You'll come?"

"What, to lunch?" said Lady Niton, just behind. "Of course they will. What else is there for the women to do? Congratulate you on your waistcoat, Oliver."

"Isn't it superb?" he said, drawing himself up with mock majesty, so as to show it off. "I am Alicia's debtor for life."

Yet a careful ear might have detected something a little hollow in the tone.

Lady Niton looked at him, and then at Miss Drake, evidently restraining her sharp tongue for once, though with difficulty. Marsham lingered a moment making some last arrangements for the day with his sister. Diana noticed that he towered over the men among whom he stood; and she felt herself suddenly delighting in his height, in his voice which was remarkably refined and agreeable, in his whole capable and masterful presence. Bobbie Forbes standing beside him was dwarfed to insignificance, and he seemed to be conscious of it, for he rose on his toes a little, involuntarily copying Marsham's attitude, and looking up at him.

As the shooters departed, Forbes bringing up the rear, Lady Niton laid her wrinkled hand on his arm.

"Never mind, Bobbie, never mind!"--she smiled at him confidentially. "We can't all be six foot."

Bobbie stared at her--first fiercely--then exploded with laughter, shook off her hand and departed.

Lady Niton, evidently much pleased with herself, came back to the window where most of the other ladies stood watching the shooters with their line of beaters crossing the lawn toward the park beyond. "Ah!" she said, "I thought Alicia would see the last of them!"

For Miss Drake, in defiance of wind and spitting rain, was walking over the lawn the centre of a large group, with Marsham beside her. Her white serge dress and the blue shawl she had thrown over her fair head made a brilliant spot in the dark wavering line.

"Alicia is very picturesque," said Mrs. Fotheringham, turning away.

"Yes--and last summer Oliver seemed to be well aware of it," said Lady Niton, in her ear.

"Was he? He has always been very good friends with Alicia."

"He could have done without the waistcoat," said Lady Niton, sharply.

"Aren't you rather unkind? She began it last summer, and finished it yesterday. Then, of course, she presented it to him. I don't see why that should expose her to remarks."

"One can't help making remarks about Alicia," said Lady Niton, calmly, "and she can defend herself so well."

"Poor Alicia!"

"Confess you wouldn't like Oliver to marry her."

"Oliver never had any thought of it."

Lady Niton shook her queer gray head.

"Oliver paid her a good deal of attention last summer. Alicia must certainly have considered the matter. And she is a young lady not easily baffled."

"Baffled!" Mrs. Fotheringham laughed. "What can she do?"

"Well, it's true that Oliver seems to have got another idea in his head. What do you think of that pretty child who came yesterday--the Mallory girl?"

Mrs. Fotheringham hesitated, then said, coldly:

"I don't like discussing these things. Oliver has plenty of time before him."

"If he is turning his thoughts in that quarter," persisted Lady Niton, "I give him my blessing. Well bred, handsome, and well off--what's your objection?"

Mrs. Fotheringham laughed impatiently. "Really, Lady Niton, I made no objection."

"You don't like her!"

"I have only known her twenty-four hours. How can I have formed any opinion about her?"

"No--you don't like her! I suppose you thought she talked stuff last night?"

"Well, there can be no two opinions about that!" cried Mrs. Fotheringham. "Her father seems to have filled her head with all sorts of false Jingo notions, and I must say I wondered Oliver was so patient with her."

Lady Niton glanced at the thin fanatical face of the speaker.

"Oliver had great difficulty in holding his own. She is no fool, and you'll find it out, Isabel, if you try to argue her down--"

"I shouldn't dream of arguing with such a child!"

"Well, all I know is Ferrier seemed to admire her performance."

Mrs. Fotheringham paused a moment, then said, with harsh intensity:

"Men have not the same sense of responsibility."

"You mean their brains are befogged by a pretty face?"

"They don't put non-essentials aside, as we do. A girl like that, in love with what she calls 'glory' and 'prestige,' is a dangerous and demoralizing influence. That glorification of the Army is at the root of half our crimes!"

Mrs. Fotheringham's pale skin had flushed till it made one red with her red hair. Lady Niton looked at her with mingled amusement and irritation. She wondered why men married such women as Isabel Fotheringham. Certainly Ned Fotheringham himself--deceased some three years before this date--had paid heavily for his mistake; especially through the endless disputes which had arisen between his children and his second wife--partly on questions of religion, partly on this matter of the Army. Mrs. Fotheringham was an agnostic; her stepsons, the children of a devout mother, were churchmen. Influenced, moreover, by a small coterie, in which, to the dismay of her elderly husband, she had passed most of her early married years, she detested the Army as a brutal influence on the national life. Her youngest step-son, however, had insisted on becoming a soldier. She broke with him, and with his brothers who supported him. Now a childless widow, without ties and moderately rich, she was free to devote herself to her ideas. In former days she would have been a religious bigot of the first water; the bigotry was still there; only the subjects of it were changed.

Lady Niton delighted in attacking her; yet was not without a certain respect for her. Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her. How people came by them, she herself could never imagine.

On this particular morning, however, Mrs. Fotheringham did not allow herself as long a wrangle as usual with her old adversary. She went off, carrying an armful of letters with large enclosures, and Lady Niton understood that for the rest of the morning she would be as much absorbed by her correspondence--mostly on public questions--as the Leader of the Opposition himself, to whom the library was sacredly given up.

"When that woman takes a dislike," she thought to herself, "it sticks! She has taken a dislike to the Mallory girl. Well, if Oliver wants her, let him fight for her. I hope she won't drop into his mouth! Mallory! Mallory! I wonder where she comes from, and who her people are."

Meanwhile Diana was sitting among her letters, which mainly concerned the last details of the Beechcote furnishing. She and Mrs. Colwood were now "Muriel" and "Diana" to each other, and Mrs. Colwood had been admitted to a practical share in Diana's small anxieties.

Suddenly Diana, who had just opened a hitherto unread letter, exclaimed:

"Oh, but how delightful!"

Mrs. Colwood looked up; Diana's aspect was one of sparkling pleasure and surprise.

"One of my Barbadoes' cousins is here--in London--actually in London--and I knew nothing of her coming. She writes to me.--Of course she must come to Beechcote--she must come at once!"

She sprang up, and went to a writing-table near, to look for a telegraph form. She wrote a message with eagerness, despatched it, and then explained as coherently as her evident emotion and excitement would allow.

"They are my only relations in the world--that I know of--that papa ever spoke to me about. Mamma's sister married Mr. Merton. He was a planter in Barbadoes. He died about three years ago, but his widow and daughters have lived on there. They were very poor and couldn't afford to come home. Fanny is the eldest--I think she must be about twenty."

Diana paced up and down, with her hands behind her, wondering when her telegram would reach her cousin, who was staying at a London boarding-house, when she might be expected at Beechcote, how long she could be persuaded to stay--speculations, in fact, innumerable. Her agitation was pathetic in Mrs. Colwood's eyes. It testified to the girl's secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance.

Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her cousins.

"Oh, some years!" said Diana, vaguely. "I remember a letter coming--before we went to the East--and papa reading it. I know"--she hesitated--"I know he didn't like Mr. Merton."

She stood still a moment, thinking. The lights and shadows of reviving memory crossed her face, and presently her thought emerged, with very little hint to her companion of the course it had been taking out of sight.

"Papa always thought it a horrid life for them--Aunt Merton and the girls--especially after they gave up their estate and came to live in the town. But how could they help it? They must have been very poor. Fanny"--she took up the letter--"Fanny says she has come home to learn music and French--that she may earn money by teaching when she goes back. She doesn't write very well, does she?"

She held out the sheet.

The handwriting, indeed, was remarkably illiterate, and Mrs. Colwood could only say that probably a girl of Miss Merton's circumstances had had few advantages.

"But then, you see, we'll give her advantages!" cried Diana, throwing herself down at Mrs. Colwood's feet, and beginning to plan aloud.--"You know if she will only stay with us, we can easily have people down from London for lessons. And she can have the green bedroom--over the dining-room--can't she?--and the library to practise in. It would be absurd that she should stay in London, at a horrid boarding-house, when there's Beechcote, wouldn't it?"

Mrs. Colwood agreed that Beechcote would probably be quite convenient for Miss Merton's plans. If she felt a little pang at the thought that her pleasant tête-à-tête with her new charge was to be so soon interrupted, and for an indefinite period, by a young lady with the hand-writing of a scullery-maid, she kept it entirely hidden.

Diana talked herself into the most rose-colored plans for Fanny Merton's benefit--so voluminous, indeed, that Mrs. Colwood had to leave her in the middle of them that she might go up-stairs and mend a rent in her walking-dress. Diana was left alone in the drawing-room, still smiling and dreaming. In her impulsive generosity she saw herself as the earthly providence of her cousin, sharing with a dear kinswoman her own unjustly plentiful well-being.

Then she took up the letter again. It ran thus:

"My dear Diana,--You mustn't think it cheeky my calling you that, but I am your real cousin, and mother told me to write to you. I hope too you won't be ashamed of us though we are poor. Everybody knows us in Barbadoes, though of course that's not London. I am the eldest of the family, and I got very tired of living all in a pie, and so I've come home to England to better myself.--A year ago I was engaged to be married, but the young man behaved badly. A good riddance, all my friends told me--but it wasn't a pleasant experience. Anyway now I want to earn some money, and see the world a little. I have got rather a good voice, and I am considered handsome--at least smart-looking. If you are not too grand to invite me to your place, I should like to come and see you, but of course you must do as you please. I got your address from the bank Uncle Mallory used to send us checks on. I can tell you we have missed those checks pretty badly this last year. I hope you have now got over your great sorrow.--This boarding-house is horribly poky but cheap, which is the great thing. I arrived the night before last,
"And I am
Your affectionate cousin
FANNY MERTON."

No, it really was not an attractive letter. On the second reading, Diana pushed it away from her, rather hastily. Then she reminded herself again, elaborately, of the Mertons' disadvantages in life, painting them in imagination as black as possible. And before she had gone far with this process all doubt and distaste were once more swept away by the rush of yearning, of an interest she could not subdue, in this being of her own flesh and blood, the child of her mother's sister. She sat with flushed cheeks, absorbed in a stream of thoughts and reminiscence.

"You look as though you had had good news," said Sir James Chide, as he paused beside her on his way through the drawing-room. He was not a sportsman; nor was Mr. Ferrier.

His eyes rested upon her with such a kind interest, his manner showed so plainly yet again that he desired to be her friend, that Diana responded at once.

"I have found a cousin!" she said, gayly, and told the story of her expected visitor.

Outwardly--perfunctorily--Sir James's aspect while she was speaking answered to hers. If she was pleased, he was pleased too. He congratulated her; he entered into her schemes for Miss Merton's amusement. Really, all the time, the man's aspect was singularly grave, he listened carefully to every word; he observed the speaker.

"The young lady's mother is your aunt?"

"She was my mother's sister."

"And they have been long in Barbadoes?"

"I think they migrated there just about the same time we went abroad--after my mother's death."

Sir James said little. He encouraged her to talk on; he listened to the phrases of memory or expectation which revealed her history--her solitary bringing-up--her reserved and scholarly father--the singular closeness, and yet as it seemed strangeness of her relation to him. It appeared, for instance, that it was only an accident, some years before, which had revealed to Diana the very existence of these cousins. Her father had never spoken of them spontaneously.

"I hope she will be everything that is charming and delightful," he said at last as he rose. "And remember--I am to come and see you!"

He stooped his gray head, and gently touched her hand with an old man's freedom.

Diana warmly renewed her invitation.

"There is a house near you that I often go to--Sir William Felton's. I am to be there in a few weeks. Perhaps I shall even be able to make acquaintance with Miss Fanny!"

He walked away from her.

Diana could not see the instant change of countenance which accompanied the movement. Urbanity, gentleness, kind indulgence vanished. Sir James looked anxious and disturbed; and he seemed to be talking to himself.

The rest of the morning passed heavily. Diana wrote some letters, and devoutly hoped the rain would stop. In the intervals of her letter-writing, or her study of the clouds, she tried to make friends with Miss Drake and Mrs. Fotheringham. But neither effort came to good. Alicia, so expansive, so theatrical, so much the centre of the situation, when she chose, could be equally prickly, monosyllabic, and repellent when it suited her to be so. Diana talked timidly of dress, of London, and the Season. They were the subjects on which it seemed most natural to approach Miss Drake; Diana's attitude was inquiring and propitiatory. But Alicia could find none but careless or scanty replies till Madeleine Varley came up. Then Miss Drake's tongue was loosened. To her, as to an equal and intimate, she displayed her expert knowledge of shops and modistes, of "people" and their stories. Diana sat snubbed and silent, a little provincial outsider, for whom "seasons" are not made. Nor was it any better with Mrs. Fotheringham. At twelve o'clock that lady brought the London papers into the drawing-room. Further information had been received from the Afghan frontier. The English loss in the engagement already reported was greater than had been at first supposed; and Diana found the name of an officer she had known in India among the dead. As she pondered the telegram, the tears in her eyes, she heard Mrs. Fotheringham describe the news as "on the whole very satisfactory." The nation required the lesson. Whereupon Diana's tongue was loosed and would not be quieted. She dwelt hotly on the "sniping," the treacheries, the midnight murders which had preceded the expedition, Mrs. Fotheringham listened to her with flashing looks, and suddenly she broke into a denunciation of war, the military spirit, and the ignorant and unscrupulous persons at home, especially women, who aid and abet politicians in violence and iniquity, the passion of which soon struck Diana dumb. Here was no honorable fight of equal minds. She was being punished for her advocacy of the night before, by an older woman of tyrannical temper, toward whom she stood in the relation of guest to host. It was in vain to look round for defenders. The only man present was Mr. Barton, who sat listening with ill-concealed smiles to what was going on, without taking part in it.

Diana extricated herself with as much dignity as she could muster, but she was too young to take the matter philosophically. She went up-stairs burning with anger, the tears of hurt feeling in her eyes. It seemed to her that Mrs. Fotheringham's attack implied a personal dislike; Mr. Marsham's sister had been glad to "take it out of her." To this young cherished creature it was almost her first experience of the kind.

On the way up-stairs she paused to look wistfully out of a staircase window. Still raining--alack! She thought with longing of the open fields, and the shooters. Was there to be no escape all day from the ugly oppressive house, and some of its inmates? Half shyly, yet with a quickening of the heart, she remembered Marsham's farewell to her of that morning, his look of the night before. Intellectually, she was comparatively mature; in other respects, as inexperienced and impressionable as any convent girl.

"I fear luncheon is impossible!" said Lady Lucy's voice.

Diana looked up and saw her descending the stairs.

"Such a pity! Oliver will be so disappointed."

She paused beside her guest--an attractive and distinguished figure. On her white hair she wore a lace cap which was tied very precisely under her delicate chin. Her dress, of black satin, was made in a full plain fashion of her own; she had long since ceased to allow her dressmaker any voice in it; and her still beautiful hands flashed with diamonds, not however in any vulgar profusion. Lady Lucy's mother had been of a Quaker family, and though Quakerism in her had been deeply alloyed with other metals, the moral and intellectual self-dependence of Quakerism, its fastidious reserves and discrimination were very strong in her. Discrimination indeed was the note of her being. For every Christian, some Christian precepts are obsolete. For Lady Lucy that which runs--"Judge Not!"--had never been alive.

Her emphatic reference to Marsham had brought the ready color to Diana's cheeks.

"Yes--there seems no chance!--" she said, shyly, and regretfully, as the rain beat on the window.

"Oh, dear me, yes!" said a voice behind them. "The glass is going up. It'll be a fine afternoon--and we'll go and meet them at Holme Copse. Sha'n't we, Lady Lucy?"

Mr. Ferrier appeared, coming up from the library laden with papers. The three stood chatting together on the broad gallery which ran round the hall. The kindness of the two elders was so marked that Diana's spirits returned; she was not to be quite a pariah it seemed! As she walked away toward her room, Mr. Ferrier's eyes pursued her--the slim round figure, the young loveliness of her head and neck.

"Well!--what are you thinking about her?" he said, eagerly, turning to the mistress of the house.

Lady Lucy smiled.

"I should prefer it if she didn't talk politics," she said, with the slightest possible stiffness, "But she seems a very charming girl."

"She talks politics, my dear lady, because living alone with her father and with her books, she has had nothing else to talk about but politics and books. Would you rather she talked scandal--or Monte Carlo?"

The Quaker in Lady Lucy laughed.

"Of course if she married Oliver, she would subordinate her opinions to his."

"Would she!" said Mr. Ferrier--"I'm not so sure!"

Lady Lucy replied that if not, it would be calamitous. In which she spoke sincerely. For although now the ruler, and, if the truth were known, the somewhat despotic ruler of Tallyn, in her husband's lifetime she had known very well how to obey.

"I have asked various people about the Mallorys," she resumed. "But nobody seems to be able to tell me anything."

"I trace her to Sir Thomas of that ilk. Why not? It is a Welsh name!"

"I have no idea who her mother was," said Lady Lucy, musing. "Her father was very refined--quite a gentleman."

"She bears, I think, very respectable witness to her mother," laughed Ferrier. "Good stock on both sides; she carries it in her face."

"That's all I ask," said Lady Lucy, quietly.

"But that you do ask!" Her companion looked at her with an eye half affectionate, half ironic. "Most exclusive of women! I sometimes wish I might unveil your real opinions to the Radical fellows who come here."

Lady Lucy colored faintly.

"That has nothing to do with politics."

"Hasn't it? I can't imagine anything that has more to do with them."

"I was thinking of character--honorable tradition--not blood."

Ferrier shook his head.

"Won't do. Barton wouldn't pass you--'A man's a man for a' that'--and a woman too."

"Then I am a Tory!" said Lady Lucy, with a smile that shot pleasantly through her gray eyes.

"At last you confess it!" cried Ferrier, as he carried off his papers. But his gayety soon departed. He stood awhile at the window in his room, looking out upon the sodden park--a rather gray and sombre figure. Over his ugly impressiveness a veil of weariness had dropped. Politics and the strife of parties, the devices of enemies and the dissatisfaction of friends--his soul was tired of them. And the emergence of this possible love-affair--for the moment, ardent and deep as were the man's affections and sympathies, toward this Marsham household, it did but increase his sense of moral fatigue. If the flutter in the blood--and the long companionship of equal love--if these were the only things of real value in life--how had his been worth living?

CHAPTER V

The last covert had been shot, and as Marsham and his party, followed by scattered groups of beaters, turned homeward over the few fields that separated them from the park, figures appeared coming toward them in the rosy dusk--Mr. Ferrier and Diana in front, with most of the other guests of the house in their train. There was a merry fraternization between the two parties--a characteristic English scene, in a characteristic setting: the men in their tweed shooting-suits, some with their guns over their shoulders, for the most part young and tall, clean-limbed and clear-eyed, the well-to-do Englishman at his most English moment, and brimming with the joy of life; the girls dressed in the same tweed stuffs, and with the same skilled and expensive simplicity, but wearing, some of them, over their cloth caps, bright veils, white or green or blue, which were tied under their chins, and framed faces aglow with exercise and health.

Marsham's eyes flew to Diana, who was in black, with a white veil. Some of the natural curls on her temples, which reminded him of a Vandyck picture, had been a little blown by the wind across her beautiful brow; he liked the touch of wildness that they gave; and he was charmed anew by the contrast between her frank young strength, and the wistful look, so full of relation to all about it, as though seeking to understand and be one with it. He perceived too her childish pleasure in each fresh incident and experience of the English winter, which proved to her anew that she had come home; and he flattered himself, as he went straight to her side, that his coming had at least no dimming effect on the radiance that had been there before.

"I believe you are not pining for the Mediterranean!" he said, laughing, as they walked on together.

In a smiling silence she drew in a great breath of the frosty air while her eyes ranged along the chalk down, on the western edge of which they were walking, and then over the plain at their feet, the smoke wreaths that hung above the villages, the western sky filled stormily with the purples and grays and crimsons of the sunset, the woods that climbed the down, or ran in a dark rampart along its crest.

"No one can ever love it as much as I do!"--she said at last--"because I have been an exile. That will be my advantage always."

"Your compensation--perhaps."

"Mrs. Colwood puts it that way. Only I don't like having my grievance taken away."

"Against whom?"

"Ah! not against papa!" she said, hurriedly--"against Fate!"

"If you dislike being deprived of a grievance--so do I. You have returned me my Rossetti."

She laughed merrily.

"You made sure I should lose or keep it?"

"It is the first book that anybody has returned to me for years. I was quite resigned."

"To a damaging estimate of my character? Thank you very much!"

"I wonder"--he said, in another tone--"what sort of estimate you have of my character--false, or true?"

"Well, there have been a great many surprises!" said Diana, raising her eyebrows.

"In the matter of my character?"

"Not altogether."

"My surroundings? You mean I talked Radicalism--or, as you would call it, Socialism--to you at Portofino, and here you find me in the character of a sporting Squire?"

"I hear"--she said, deliberately looking about her--"that this is the finest shoot in the county."

"It is. There is no denying it. But, in the first place, it's my mother's shoot, not mine--the estate is hers, not mine--and she wishes old customs to be kept up. In the next--well, of course, the truth is that I like it abominably!"

He had thrust his cap into his pocket, and was walking bareheaded. In the glow of the evening air his strong manhood seemed to gain an added force and vitality. He moved beside her, magnified and haloed, as it were, by the dusk and the sunset. Yet his effect upon her was no mere physical effect of good looks and a fine stature. It was rather the effect of a personality which strangely fitted with and evoked her own--of that congruity, indeed, from which all else springs.

She laughed at his confession.

"I hear also that you are the best shot in the neighborhood."

"Who has been talking to you about me?" he asked, with a slight knitting of the brows.

"Mr. Ferrier--a little."

He gave an impatient sigh, so disproportionate to the tone of their conversation, that Diana looked at him in sudden surprise.

"Haven't you often wondered how it is that the very people who know you best know you least?"

The question was impetuously delivered. Diana recalled Mr. Forbes's remarks as to dissensions behind the scenes. She stepped cautiously.

"I thought Mr. Ferrier knew everything!"

"I wish he knew something about his party--and the House of Commons!" cried Marsham, as though a passion within leaped to the surface.

The startled eyes beside him beguiled him further.

"I didn't mean to say anything indiscreet--or disloyal," he said, with a smile, recovering himself. "It is often the greatest men who cling to the old world--when the new is clamoring. But the new means to be heard all the same."

Diana's color flashed.

"I would rather be in that old world with Mr. Ferrier than in the new with Mr. Barton!"

"What is the use of talking of preferences? The world is what it is--and will be what it will be. Barton is our master--Ferrier's and mine. The point is to come to terms, and make the best of it."

"No!--the point is--to hold the gate!--and die on the threshold, if need be."

They had come to a stile. Marsham had crossed it, and Diana mounted. Her young form showed sharply against the west; he looked into her eyes, divided between laughter and feeling; she gave him her hand. The man's pulses leaped anew. He was naturally of a cool and self-possessed temperament--the life of the brain much stronger in him than the life of the senses. But at that moment he recognized--as perhaps, for the first time, the night before--that Nature and youth had him at last in grip. At the same time the remembrance of a walk over the same ground that he had taken in the autumn With Alicia Drake flashed, unwelcomed, into his mind. It stirred a half-uneasy, half-laughing compunction. He could not flatter himself--yet--that his cousin had forgotten it.

"What gate?--and what threshold?" he asked Diana, as they moved on. "If you mean the gate of power--it is too late. Democracy is in the citadel--and has run up its own flag. Or to take another metaphor--the Whirlwind is in possession--the only question is who shall ride it!"

Diana declared that the Socialists would ride it to the abyss--with England on the crupper.

"Magnificent!" said Marsham, "but merely rhetorical. Besides--all that we ask, is that Ferrier should ride it. Let him only try the beast--and he will find it tame enough."

"And if he won't?--"

"Ah, if he won't--" said Marsham, uncertainly, and paused. In the growing darkness she could no longer see his face plainly. But presently he resumed, more earnestly and simply.

"Don't misunderstand me! Ferrier is our chief--my chief, above all--and one does not even discuss whether one is loyal to him. The party owes him an enormous debt. As for myself--" He drew a long breath, which was again a sigh.

Then with a change of manner, and in a lighter tone: "I seem to have given myself away--to an enemy!"

"Poor enemy!"

He looked at her, half laughing, half anxious.

"Tell me!--last night--you thought me intolerant--overbearing?"

"I disliked being beaten," said Diana, candidly; "especially as it was only my ignorance that was beaten--not my cause."

"Shall we begin again?"

Through his gayety, however, a male satisfaction in victory pierced very plainly. Diana winced a little.

"No, no! I must go back to Captain Roughsedge first and get some new arguments!"

"Roughsedge!" he said, in surprise. "Roughsedge? He never carried an argument through in his life!"

Diana defended her new friend to ears unsympathetic. Her defence, indeed, evoked from him a series of the same impatient, sarcastic remarks on the subject of the neighbors as had scandalized her the day before. She fired up, and they were soon in the midst of another battle-royal, partly on the merits of particular persons and partly on a more general theme--the advantage or disadvantage of an optimist view of your fellow-creatures.

Marsham was, before long, hard put to it in argument, and very delicately and discreetly convicted of arrogance or worse. They were entering the woods of the park when he suddenly stopped and said:

"Do you know that you have had a jolly good revenge--pressed down and running over?"

Diana smiled, and said nothing. She had delighted in the encounter; so, in spite of castigation, had he. There surged up in him a happy excited consciousness of quickened life and hurrying hours. He looked with distaste at the nearness of the house; and at the group of figures which had paused in front of them, waiting for them, on the farther edge of the broad lawn.

"You have convicted me of an odious, exclusive, bullying temper--or you think you have--and all you will allow me in the way of victory is that I got the best of it because Captain Roughsedge wasn't there!"

"Not at all. I respect your critical faculty!"

"You wish to hear me gush like Mrs. Minchin. It is simply astounding the number of people you like!"

Diana's laugh broke into a sigh.

"Perhaps it's like a hungry boy in a goody-shop. He wants to eat them all."

"Were you so very solitary as a child?" he asked her, gently, in a changed tone, which was itself an act of homage, almost a caress.

"Yes--I was very solitary," she said, after a pause. "And I am really gregarious--dreadfully fond of people!--and curious about them. And I think, oddly enough, papa was too."

A question rose naturally to his lips, but was checked unspoken. He well remembered Mr. Mallory at Portofino; a pleasant courteous man, evidently by nature a man of the world, interested in affairs and in literature, with all the signs on him of the English governing class. It was certainly curious that he should have spent all those years in exile with his child, in a remote villa on the Italian coast. Health, Marsham supposed, or finance--the two chief motives of life. For himself, the thought of Diana's childhood between the pine woods and the sea gave him pleasure; it added another to the poetical and romantic ideas which she suggested. There came back on him the plash of the waves beneath the Portofino headland, the murmur of the pines, the fragrance of the underwood. He felt the kindred between all these, and her maidenly energy, her unspoiled beauty.

"One moment!" he said, as they began to cross the lawn. "Has my sister attacked you yet?"

The smile with which the words were spoken could be heard though not seen. Diana laughed, a little awkwardly.

"I am afraid Mrs. Fotheringham thinks me a child of blood and thunder! I am so sorry!"

"If she presses you too hard, call me in. Isabel and I understand each other."

Diana murmured something polite.

Mr. Frobisher meanwhile came to meet them with a remark upon the beauty of the evening, and Alicia Drake followed.

"I expect you found it a horrid long way," she said to Diana. Diana disclaimed fatigue.

"You came so slowly, we thought you must be tired."

Something in the drawling manner and the slightly insolent expression made the words sting. Diana hurried on to Marion Vincent's side. That lady was leaning on a stick, and for the first time Diana saw that she was slightly lame. She looked up with a pleasant smile and greeting; but before they could move on across the ample drive, Mr. Frobisher overtook them.

"Won't you take my arm?" he said, in a low voice.

Miss Vincent slipped her hand inside his arm, and rested on him. He supported her with what seemed to Diana a tender carefulness, his head bent to hers, while he talked and she replied.

Diana followed, her girl's heart kindling.

"Surely!--surely!--they are in love?--engaged?"

But no one else appeared to take any notice or made any remark.

Long did the memory of the evening which followed live warm in the heart of Diana. It was to her an evening of triumph--triumph innocent, harmless, and complete. Her charm, her personality had by now captured the whole party, save for an opposition of three--and the three realized that they had for the moment no chance of influencing the popular voice. The rugged face of Mr. Barton stiffened as she approached; it seemed to him that the night before he had been snubbed by a chit, and he was not the man to forget it easily. Alicia Drake was a little pale and a little silent during the evening, till, late in its course, she succeeded in carrying off a group of young men who had come for the shoot and were staying the night, and in establishing a noisy court among them Mrs. Fotheringham disapproved, by now, of almost everything that concerned Miss Mallory: of her taste in music or in books, of the touch of effusion in her manner, which was of course "affected" or "aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she did not possess, no less than of those She did. On the sacred subject of the suffrage, for instance, which with Mrs. Fotheringham was a matter for propaganda everywhere and at all times, Diana was but a cracked cymbal, when struck she gave back either no sound at all, or a wavering one. Her beautiful eyes were blank or hostile; she would escape like a fawn from the hunter. As for other politics, no one but Mrs. Fotheringham dreamed of introducing them. She, however, would have discovered many ways of dragging them in, and of setting down Diana; but here her brother was on the watch, and time after time she found herself checked or warded off.

Diana, indeed, was well defended. The more ill-humored Mrs. Fotheringham grew, the more Lady Niton enjoyed the evening and her own "Nitonisms." It was she who after dinner suggested the clearing of the hall and an impromptu dance--on the ground that "girls must waltz for their living." And when Diana proved to be one of those in whom dancing is a natural and shining gift, so that even the gilded youths of the party, who were perhaps inclined to fight shy of Miss Mallory as "a girl who talked clever," even they came crowding about her, like flies about a milk-pail--it was Lady Niton who drew Isabel Fotheringham's attention to it loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing and at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the grand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall. And when the singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, had added to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflected triumph, appealing to the spectators on all sides for applause. The topics that Diana fled from, Lady Niton took up; and when Mrs. Fotheringham, bewildered by an avalanche of words, would say--"Give me time, please, Lady Niton--I must think!"--Lady Niton would reply, coolly--"Not unless you're accustomed to it"; while she finally capped her misdeeds by insisting that it was no good to say Mr. Barton had a warm heart if he were without that much more useful possession--a narrow mind.

Thus buttressed and befriended on almost all sides, Diana drank her cup of pleasure. Once in an interval between two dances, as she passed on Oliver Marsham's arm, close to Lady Lucy, that lady put up her frail old hand, and gently touched Diana's. "Do not overtire yourself, my dear!" she said, with effusion; and Oliver, looking down, knew very well what his mother's rare effusion meant, if Diana did not. On several occasions Mr. Perrier sought her out, with every mark of flattering attention, while it often seemed to Diana as if the protecting kindness of Sir James Chide was never far away. In her white ingenue's dress she was an embodiment of youth, simplicity, and joy, such as perhaps our grandmothers knew more commonly than we, in our more hurried and complex day. And at the same time there floated round her something more than youth--something more thrilling and challenging than mere girlish delight--an effluence, a passion, a "swell of soul," which made this dawn of her life more bewitching even for its promise than for its performance.

For Marsham, too, the hours flew. He was carried away, enchanted; he had eyes for no one, time for no one but Diana; and before the end of the evening the gossip among the Tallyn guests ran fast and free. When at last the dance broke up, many a curious eye watched the parting between Marsham and Diana; and in their bedroom on the top floor Lady Lucy's two nieces sat up till the small hours discussing, first, the situation--was Oliver really caught at last?--and then, Alicia's refusal to discuss it. She had said bluntly that she was dog-tired--and shut her door upon them.

On a hint from his mother, Marsham went to say good-night to her in her room. She threw her arms round his neck, whispering: "Dear Oliver!--dear Oliver!--I just wished you to know--if it is as I think--that you had my blessing."

He drew back, a little shrinking and reluctant--yet still flushed, as it were, with the last rays Diana's sun had shed upon him.

"Things mustn't be hurried, mother."

"No--no--they sha'n't. But you know how I have wished to see you happy--how ambitious I have been for you!"

"Yes, mother, I know. You have been always very good to me." He had recovered his composure, and stood holding her hand and smiling at her.

"What a charming creature, Oliver! It is a pity, of course, her father has indoctrinated her with those opinions, but--"

"Opinions!" he said, scornfully--"what do they matter!" But he could not discuss Diana. His blood was still too hot within him.

"Of course--of course!" said Lady Lucy, soothingly. "She is so young--she will develop. But what a wife, Oliver, she will make--how she might help a man on--with her talents and her beauty and her refinement. She has such dignity, too, for her years."

He made no reply, except to repeat:

"Don't hurry it, mother--don't hurry it."

"No--no"--she said, laughing--"I am not such a fool. There will be many natural opportunities of meeting."

"There are some difficulties with the Vavasours. They have been disagreeable about the gardens. Ferrier and I have promised to go over and advise her."

"Good!" said Lady Lucy, delighted that the Vavasours had been disagreeable. "Good-night, my son, good-night!"

A minute later Oliver stood meditating in his own room, where he had just donned his smoking-jacket. By one of the natural ironies of life, at a moment when he was more in love than he had ever been yet, he was, nevertheless, thinking eagerly of prospects and of money. Owing to his peculiar relation to his mother, and his father's estate, marriage would be to him no mere satisfaction of a personal passion. It would be a vital incident in a politician's career, to whom larger means and greater independence were now urgently necessary. To marry with his mother's full approval would at last bring about that provision for himself which his father's will had most unjustly postponed. He was monstrously dependent upon her. It had been one of the chief checks on a strong and concentrated ambition. But Lady Lucy had long made him understand that to marry according to her wishes would mean emancipation: a much larger income in the present, and the final settlement of her will in his favor. It was amazing how she had taken to Diana! Diana had only to accept him, and his future was secured.

But though thoughts of this kind passed in tumultuous procession through the grooves of consciousness, they were soon expelled by others. Marsham was no mere interested schemer. Diana should help him to his career; but above all and before all she was the adorable brown-eyed creature, whose looks had just been shining upon him, whose soft hand had just been lingering in his! As he stood alone and spellbound in the dark, yielding himself to the surging waves of feeling which broke over his mind, the thought, the dream, of holding Diana Mallory in his arms--of her head against his breast--came upon him with a sudden and stinging delight.

Yet the delight was under control--the control of a keen and practical intelligence. There rose in him a sharp sense of the unfathomed depths and possibilities in such a nature as Diana's. Once or twice that evening, through all her sweet forthcomingness, when he had forced the note a little, she had looked at him in sudden surprise or shrinking. No!--nothing premature! It seemed to him, as it had seemed to Bobbie Forbes, that she could only be won by the slow and gradual conquest of a rich personality. He set himself to the task.

Down-stairs Mr. Ferrier and Sir James Chide were sitting together in a remote corner of the hall. Mr. Ferrier, in great good-humor with the state of things, was discussing Oliver's chances, confidentially, with his old friend. Sir James sat smoking in silence. He listened to Ferrier's praises of Miss Mallory, to his generous appreciation of Marsham's future, to his speculations as to what Lady Lucy would do for her son, upon his marriage, or as to the part which a creature so brilliant and so winning as Diana might be expected to play in London and in political life.

Sir James said little or nothing. He knew Lady Lucy well, and had known her long. Presently he rose abruptly and went up-stairs to bed.

"Ought I to speak?" he asked himself, in an agony of doubt. "Perhaps a word to Ferrier?--"

No!--impossible!--impossible! Yet, as he mounted the stairs, over the house which had just seen the triumph of Diana, over that radiant figure itself, the second sight of the great lawyer perceived the brooding of a cloud of fate; nor could he do anything to avert or soften its downfall.

Meanwhile Diana's golden hour had found an unexpected epilogue. After her good-night to Marsham she was walking along the gallery corridor going toward her room, when she perceived Miss Vincent in front of her moving slowly and, as it seemed, with difficulty. A sudden impulse made Diana fly after her.

"Do let me help you!" she said, shyly.

Marion Vincent smiled, and put her hand in the girl's arm.

"How do people manage to live at all in these big houses, and with dinner-parties every night!" she said, laughing. "After a day in the East End I am never half so tired."

She was indeed so pale that Diana was rather frightened, and remembering that in the afternoon she had seen Miss Vincent descend from an upper floor, she offered a rest in her own room, which was close by, before the evidently lame woman attempted further stairs.

Marion Vincent hesitated a moment, then accepted. Diana hurried up a chair to the fire, installed her there, and herself sat on the floor watching her guest with some anxiety.

Yet, as she did so, she felt a certain antagonism. The face, of which the eyes were now closed, was nobly grave. The expression of its deeply marked lines appealed to her heart. But why this singularity--this eccentricity? Miss Vincent wore the same dress of dark woollen stuff, garnished with white frills, in which she had appeared the night before, and her morning attire, as Mr. Frobisher had foretold, had consisted of a precisely similar garment, adorned with a straight collar instead of frills. Surely a piece of acting!--of unnecessary self-assertion!

Yet all through the day--and the evening--Diana had been conscious of this woman's presence, in a strange penetrating way, even when they had had least to do with each other. In the intervals of her own joyous progress she had been often aware of Miss Vincent sitting apart, sometimes with Mr. Frobisher, who was reading or talking to her, sometimes with Lady Lucy, and--during the dance--with John Barton. Barton might have been the Jeremiah or the Ezekiel of the occasion. He sat astride upon a chair, in his respectable workman's clothes, his eyes under their shaggy brows, his weather-beaten features and compressed lips expressing an ill-concealed contempt for the scene before him. It was rumored that he had wished to depart before dinner, having concluded his consultation with Mr. Ferrier, but that Mrs. Fotheringham had persuaded him to remain for the night. His presence seemed to make dancing a misdemeanor, and the rich house, with its services and appurtenances, an organized crime. But if his personality was the storm-point of the scene, charged with potential lightning, Marion Vincent's was the still small voice, without threat or bitterness, which every now and then spoke to a quick imagination like Diana's its message from a world of poverty and pain. And sometimes Diana had been startled by the perception that the message seemed to be specially for her. Miss Vincent's eyes followed her; whenever Diana passed near her, she smiled--she admired. But always, as it seemed to Diana, with a meaning behind the smile. Yet what that meaning might be the girl could not tell.

At last, as she watched her, Marion Vincent looked up.

"Mr. Barton would talk to me just now about the history of his own life. I suppose it was the dance and the supper excited him. He began to testify! Sometimes when he does that he is magnificent. He said some fine things to-night. But I am run down and couldn't stand it."

Diana asked if Mr. Barton had himself gone through a great struggle with poverty.

"The usual struggle. No more than thousands of others. Only in him it is vocal--he can reflect upon it.--You had an easy triumph over him last night," she added, with a smile, turning to her companion.

"Who wouldn't have?" cried Diana. "What outrageous things he said!"

"He doesn't know much about India--or the Colonies. He hasn't travelled; he reads very little. He showed badly. But on his own subjects he is good enough. I have known him impress or convert the most unlikely people--by nothing but a bare sincerity. Just now--while the servants were handing champagne--he and I were standing a little way off under the gallery. His eyes are weak, and he can't bear the glare of all these lights. Suddenly he told me the story of his father's death."

She paused, and drew her hand across her eyes. Diana saw that they were wet. But although startled, the girl held herself a little aloof and erect, as though ready at a moment's notice to defend herself against a softening which might involve a treachery to glorious and sacred things.

"It so chanced"--Miss Vincent resumed--"that it had a bearing on experiences of my own--just now."

"You are living in the East End?"

"At present. I am trying to find out the causes of a great wave of poverty and unemployment in a particular district."--She named it.--"It is hard work--and not particularly good for the nerves."

She smiled, but at the same moment she turned extremely white, and as she fell back in her chair, Diana saw her clinch her hand as though in a strong effort for physical self-control.

Diana sprang up.

"Let me get you some water!"

"Don't go. Don't tell anybody. Just open that window." Diana obeyed, and the northwest wind, sweeping in, seemed to revive her pale companion almost at once.

"I am very sorry!" said Miss Vincent, after a few minutes, in her natural voice. "Now I am all right." She drank some water, and looked up.

"Shall I tell you the story he told me? It is very short, and it might change your view of him."

"If you feel able--if you are strong enough," said Diana, uncomfortably, wondering why it should matter to Miss Vincent or anybody else what view she might happen to take of Mr. Barton.

"He said he remembered his father (who was a house-painter--a very decent and hard-working man) having been out of work for eight weeks. He used to go out looking for work every day--and there was the usual story, of course, of pawning or selling all their possessions--odd jobs--increasing starvation--and so on. Meanwhile, his only pleasure--he was ten--was to go with his sister after school to look at two shops in the East India Dock Road--one a draper's with a 'Christmas Bazaar'--the other a confectioner's. He declares it made him not more starved, but less, to look at the goodies and the cakes; they imagined eating them; but they were both too sickly, he thinks, to be really hungry. As for the bazaar, with its dolls and toys, and its Father Christmas, and bright lights, they both thought it paradise. They used to flatten their noses against the glass; sometimes a shopman drove them away; but they came back and back. At last the iron shutters would come down--slowly. Then he and his sister would stoop--and stoop--to get a last look. Presently there would be only a foot of bliss left; then they both sank down flat on their stomachs on the pavement, and so stayed--greedily--till all was dark, and paradise had been swallowed up. Well, one night, the show had been specially gorgeous; they took hands afterward, and ran home. Their father had just come in. Mr. Barton can remember his staggering into the room. I'll give it in his words. 'Mother, have you got anything in the house?' 'Nothing, Tom.' And mother began to cry. 'Not a bit of bread, mother?' 'I gave the last bit to the children for their teas.' Father said nothing, but he lay down on the bed. Then he called me. 'Johnnie,' he said, 'I've got work--for next week--but I sha'n't never go to it--it's too late,' and then he asked me to hold his hand, and turned his face on the pillow. When my mother came to look, he was dead. 'Starvation and exhaustion'--the doctor said."

Marion Vincent paused.

"It's just like any other story of the kind--isn't it?" Her smile turned on Diana. "The charitable societies and missions send them out by scores in their appeals. But somehow as he told it just now, down-stairs, in that glaring hall, with the champagne going round--it seemed intolerable."

"And you mean also"--said Diana, slowly--"that a man with that history can't know or care very much about the Empire?"

"Our minds are all picture-books," said the woman beside her, in a low, dreamy voice: "it depends upon what the pictures are. To you the words 'England'--and the 'Empire'--represent one set of pictures--all bright and magnificent--like the Christmas Bazaar. To John Barton and me"--she smiled--"they represent another. We too have seen the lights, and the candles, and the toys; we have admired them, as you have; but we know the reality is not there. The reality is in the dark streets, where men tramp, looking for work; it is in the rooms where their wives and children live stifled and hungry--the rooms where our working folk die--without having lived."

Her eyes, above her pale cheeks, had opened to their fullest extent--the eyes of a seer. They held Diana. So did the voice, which was the voice of one in whom tragic passion and emotion are forever wearing away the physical frame, as the sea waves break down a crumbling shore.

Suddenly Diana bent over her, and took her hands.

"I wonder why you thought me worth talking to like this?" she said, impetuously.

"I liked you!" said Marion Vincent, simply. "I liked you as you talked last night. Only I wanted to add some more pictures to your picture-book. Your set--the popular one--is called The Glories of England. There is another--I recommend it to you: The Shames of England."

"You think poverty a disgrace?" murmured Diana, held by the glowing fanatical look of the speaker.

"Our poverty is a disgrace--the life of our poor is a disgrace. What does the Empire matter--what do Afghan campaigns matter--while London is rotten? However" (she smiled again, and caressed Diana's hand), "will you make friends with me?"

"Is it worth while for you?" said Diana, laughing. "I shall always prefer my picture-book to yours, I am afraid. And--I am not poor--and I don't give all my money away."

Miss Vincent surveyed her gayly.

"Well, I come here," (she looked significantly round the luxurious room), "and I am very good friends with the Marshams. Oliver Marsham is one of the persons from whom I hope most."

"Not in pulling down wealth--and property!" cried Diana.

"Why not? Every revolution has its Philippe Égalité Oh, it will come slowly--it will come slowly," said the other, quietly. "And of course there will be tragedy--there always is--in everything. But not, I hope, for you--never for you!" And once more her hand dropped softly on Diana's.

"You were happy to-night?--you enjoyed the dance?"

The question, so put, with such a look, from another mouth, would have been an impertinence. Diana shrank, but could not resent it. Yet, against her will, she flushed deeply.

"Yes. It was delightful. I did not expect to enjoy it so much, but--"

"But you did! That's well. That's good!"

Marion Vincent rose feebly. And as she stood, leaning on the chair, she touched the folds of Diana's white dress.

"When shall I see you again?--and that dress?"

"I shall be in London in May," said Diana, eagerly--May I come then? You must tell me where."

"Ah, you won't come to Bethnal Green in that dress. What a pity!"

Diana helped her to her room, where they shook hands and parted. Then Diana came back to her own quarters. She had put out the electric light for Miss Vincent's sake. The room was lit only by the fire. In the full-length mirror of the toilet-table Diana saw her own white reflection, and the ivy leaves in her hair. The absence of her mourning was first a pain; then the joy of the evening surged up again. Oh, was it wrong, was it wrong to be happy--in this world "where men sit and hear each other groan"? She clasped her hands to her soft breast, as though defending the warmth, the hope that were springing there, against any dark protesting force that might threaten to take them from her.

CHAPTER VI

"Henry," said Mrs. Roughsedge to her husband, "I think it would do you good to walk to Beechcote."

"No, my dear, no! I have many proofs to get through before dinner. Take Hugh. Only--"

Dr. Roughsedge, smiling, held up a beckoning finger. His wife approached.

"Don't let him fall in love with that young woman. It's no good."

"Well, she must marry somebody, Henry."

"Big fishes mate with big fishes--minnows with minnows."

"Don't run down your own son, sir. Who, pray, is too good for him?"

"The world is divided into wise men, fools, and mothers. The characters of the first two are mingled--disproportionately--in the last," said Dr. Roughsedge, patiently enduring the kiss his wife inflicted on him. "Don't kiss me, Patricia--don't tread on my proofs--go away--and tell Jane not to forget my tea because you have gone out."

Mrs. Roughsedge departed, and the doctor, who was devoted to her, sank at once into that disorderly welter of proofs and smoke which represented to him the best of the day. The morning he reserved for hard work, and during the course of it he smoked but one pipe. A quotation from Fuller which was often on his lips expressed his point of view: "Spill not the morning, which is the quintessence of the day, in recreation. For sleep itself is a recreation. And to open the morning thereto is to add sauce to sauce."

But in the afternoon he gave himself to all the delightful bye-tasks: the works of supererogation, the excursions into side paths, the niggling with proofs, the toying with style, the potterings and polishings, the ruminations, and rewritings and refinements which make the joy of the man of letters. For five-and-twenty years he had been a busy Cambridge coach, tied year in and year out to the same strictness of hours, the same monotony of subjects, the same patient drumming on thick heads and dull brains. Now that was all over. A brother had left him a little money; he had saved the rest. At sixty he had begun to live. He was editing a series of reprints for the Cambridge University Press, and what mortal man could want more than a good wife and son, a cottage to live in, a fair cook, unlimited pipes, no debts, and the best of English literature to browse in? The rural afternoon, especially, when he smoked and grubbed and divagated as he pleased, was alone enough to make the five-and-twenty years of "swink" worth while.

Mrs. Roughsedge stayed to give very particular orders to the house-parlormaid about the doctor's tea, to open a window in the tiny drawing-room, and to put up in brown paper a pair of bed-socks that she had just finished knitting for an old man in one of the parish-houses. Then she joined her son, who was already waiting for her--impatiently--in the garden.

Hugh Roughsedge had only just returned from a month's stay in London, made necessary by those new Army examinations which his soul detested. By dint of strenuous coaching he had come off moderately victorious, and had now returned home for a week's extra leave before rejoining his regiment. One of the first questions on his tongue, as his mother instantly noticed, had been a question as to Miss Mallory. Was she still at Beechcote? Had his mother seen anything of her?

Yes, she was still at Beechcote. Mrs. Roughsedge, however, had seen her but seldom and slightly since her son's departure for London. If she had made one or two observations from a distance, with respect to the young lady, she withheld them. And like the discerning mother that she was, at the very first opportunity she proposed a call at Beechcote.

On their way thither, this February afternoon, they talked in a desultory way about some new War-Office reforms, which, as usual, the entire Army believed to be merely intended--wilfully and deliberately--for its destruction; about a recent gambling scandal in the regiment, or the peculiarities of Hugh's commanding officer. Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria. Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known.

"I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.

She had already expressed the same wonder once or twice. But as neither she nor her son had any materials for deciding the point the remark hardly promoted conversation. She added to it another of more effect.

"The Miss Bertrams have already made up their minds that she is to marry Oliver Marsham."

"The deuce!" cried the startled Roughsedge. "Beg your pardon, mother, but how can those old cats possibly know?"

"They can't know," said Mrs. Roughsedge, placidly. "But as soon as you get a young woman like that into the neighborhood, of course everybody begins to speculate."

"They mumble any fresh person, like a dog with a bone," said Roughsedge, indignantly.

They were passing across the broad village street. On either hand were old timbered cottages, sun-mellowed and rain-beaten; a thatched roof showing here and there; or a bit of mean new building, breaking the time-worn line. To their left, keeping watch over the graves which encircled it, rose the fourteenth-century church; amid the trees around it rooks were cawing and wheeling; and close beneath it huddled other cottages, ivy-grown, about the village well. Afternoon school was just over, and the children were skipping and running about the streets. Through the cottage doors could be seen occasionally the gleam of a fire or a white cloth spread for tea. For the womenfolk, at least, tea was the great meal of the day in Beechcote. So that what with the flickering of the fires, and the sunset light on the windows, the skipping children, the dogs, the tea-tables, and the rooks, Beechcote wore a cheerful and idyllic air. But Mrs. Roughsedge knew too much about these cottages. In this one to the left a girl had just borne her second illegitimate child; in that one farther on were two mentally deficient children, the offspring of feeble-minded parents; in the next, an old woman, the victim of pernicious anæmia, was moaning her life away; in the last to the right the mother of five small children had just died in her sixth confinement. Mrs. Roughsedge gave a long sigh as she looked at it. The tragedy was but forty-eight hours old; she had sat up with the mother through her dying hours.

"Oh, my dear!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, suddenly--"here comes the Vicar. Do you know, it's so unlucky--and so strange!--but he has certainly taken a dislike to Miss Mallory--I believe it was because he had hoped some Christian Socialist friends of his would have taken Beechcote, and he was disappointed to find it let to some one with what he calls 'silly Tory notions' and no particular ideas about Church matters. Now there's a regular fuss--something about the Book Club. I don't understand--"

The Vicar advanced toward them. He came along at a great pace, his lean figure closely sheathed in his long clerical coat, his face a little frowning and set.

At the sight of Mrs. Roughsedge he drew up, and greeted the mother and son.

"May I have a few words with you?" he asked Mrs. Roughsedge, as he turned back with them toward the Beechcote lane. "I don't know whether you are acquainted, Mrs. Roughsedge, with what has just happened in the Book Club, to which we both belong?"

The Book Club was a village institution of some antiquity. It embraced some ten families, who drew up their Mudie lists in common and sent the books from house to house. The Vicar and Dr. Roughsedge had been till now mainly responsible for these lists--so far, at least, as "serious books" were concerned, the ladies being allowed the chief voice in the novels.

Mrs. Roughsedge, a little fluttered, asked for information.

"Miss Mallory has recommended two books which, in my opinion, should not be circulated among us," said the Vicar. "I have protested--in vain. Miss Mallory maintains her recommendation. I propose, therefore, to withdraw from the Club."

"Are they improper?" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, much distressed. Captain Roughsedge threw an angry look first at his mother and then at the Vicar.

"Not in the usual sense," said the Vicar, stiffly--"but highly improper for the reading of Christian people. One is by a Unitarian, and the other reproduces some of the worst speculations of an infidel German theology. I pointed out the nature of the books to Miss Mallory. She replied that they were both by authors whom her father liked. I regretted it. Then she fired up, refused to withdraw the names, and offered to resign. Miss Mallory's subscription to the Club is, however, much larger than mine. I shall therefore resign--protesting, of course, against the reason which induces me to take this course."

"What's wrong with the books?" asked Hugh Roughsedge.

The Vicar drew himself up.

"I have given my reasons."

"Why, you see that kind of thing in every newspaper," said Roughsedge, bluntly.

"All the more reason why I should endeavor to keep my parish free from it," was the Vicar's resolute reply. "However, there is no more to be said. I wished Mrs. Roughsedge to understand what had happened--that is all."

He paused, and offered a limp hand in good-bye.

"Let me speak to Miss Mallory," said Mrs. Roughsedge, soothingly.

The Vicar shook his head.

"She is a young lady of strong will." And with a hasty nod of farewell to the Captain, whose hostility he divined, he walked away.

"And what about obstinate and pig-headed parsons!" said Roughsedge, hotly, addressing his remark, however, safely to the Vicar's back, and to his mother. "Who makes him a judge of what we shall read! I shall make a point of asking for both the books!"

"Oh, my dear Hugh!" cried his mother, in rather troubled protest. Then she happily reflected that if he asked for them, he was not in the least likely to read them. "I hope Miss Mallory is not really an unbeliever."

"Mother! Of course, what that poker in a wide-awake did was to say something uncivil about her father, and she wasn't going to stand that. Quite right, too."

"She did come to church on Christmas Day," said Mrs. Roughsedge, reflecting. "But, then, a great many people do that who don't believe anything. Anyway, she has always been quite charming to your father and me. And I think, besides, the Vicar might have been satisfied with your father's opinion--he made no complaint about the books. Oh, now the Miss Bertrams are going to stop us! They'll of course know all about it!"

If Captain Roughsedge growled ugly words into his mustache, his mother was able to pretend not to hear them, in the gentle excitement of shaking hands with the Miss Bertrams. These middle-aged ladies, the daughters of a deceased doctor from the neighboring county town of Dunscombe, were, if possible, more plainly dressed than usual, and their manners more forbidding.

"You will have heard of this disagreeable incident which has occurred," said Miss Maria to Mrs. Roughsedge, with a pinched mouth. "My sister and I shall, of course, remove our names from the Club."

"I say--don't your subscribers order the books they like?" asked Roughsedge, half wroth and half laughing, surveying the lady with his hand on his side.

"There is a very clear understanding among us," said Miss Maria, sharply, "as to the character of the books to be ordered. No member of the Club has yet transgressed it."

"There must be give and take, mustn't there?" said Miss Elizabeth, in a deprecatory voice. She was the more amiable and the weaker of the two sisters. "We should never order books that would be offensive to Miss Mallory."

"But if you haven't read the books?"

"The Vicar's word is quite enough," said Miss Maria, with her most determined air.

They all moved on together, Captain Roughsedge smoothing or tugging at his mustache with a restless hand.

But Miss Bertram, presently, dropping a little behind, drew Mrs. Roughsedge with her.

"There are all sorts of changes at the house," she said, confidentially. "The laundry maids are allowed to go out every evening, if they like--and Miss Mallory makes no attempt to influence the servants to come to church. The Vicar says the seats for the Beechcote servants have never been so empty."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs. Roughsedge.

"And money is improperly given away. Several people whom the Vicar thinks most unfit objects of charity have been assisted. And in a conversation with her last week Miss Mallory expressed herself in a very sad way about foreign missions. Her father's idea, again, no doubt--but it is all very distressing. The Vicar doubts"--Miss Maria spoke warily, bringing her face very close to the gray curls--"whether she has ever been confirmed."

This final stroke, however, fell flat. Mrs. Roughsedge showed no emotion. "Most of my aunts," she said, stoutly, "were never confirmed, and they were good Christians and communicants all their lives."

Miss Maria's expression showed that this reference to a preceding barbaric age of the Church had no relevance to the existing order of things.

"Of course," she added, hastily, "I do not wish to make myself troublesome or conspicuous in any way. I merely mention these things as explaining why the Vicar felt bound to make a stand. The Church feeling in this parish has been so strong it would, indeed, be a pity if anything occurred to weaken it."

Mrs. Roughsedge gave a doubtful assent. As to the Church feeling, she was not so clear as Miss Bertram. One of her chief friends was a secularist cobbler who lived under the very shadow of the church. The Miss Bertrams shuddered at his conversation. Mrs. Roughsedge found him racy company, and he presented to her aspects of village life and opinion with which the Miss Bertrams were not at all acquainted.

As the mother and son approached the old house in the sunset light, its aspect of mellow and intimate congruity with the woods and fields about it had never been more winning. The red, gray, and orange of its old brickwork played into the brown and purples of its engirdling trees, into the lilacs and golds and crimsons of the western sky behind it, into the cool and quiet tones of the meadows from which it rose. A spirit of beauty had been at work fusing man's perishable and passing work with Nature's eternal masterpiece; so that the old house had in it something immortal, and the light which played upon it something gently personal, relative, and fleeting. Winter was still dominant; a northeast wind blew. But on the grass under the spreading oaks which sheltered the eastern front a few snow-drops were out. And Diana was gathering them.

She came toward her visitors with alacrity. "Oh! what a long time since you have been to see me!"

Mrs. Roughsedge explained that she had been entertaining some relations, and Hugh had been in London. She hoped that Miss Mallory had enjoyed her stay at Tallyn. It certainly seemed to both mother and son that the ingenuous young face colored a little as its owner replied--"Thank you--it was very amusing"--and then added, with a little hesitation--"Mr. Marsham has been kindly advising me since, about the gardens--and the Vavasours. They were to keep up the gardens, you know--and now they practically leave it to me--which isn't fair."

Mrs. Roughsedge secretly wondered whether this statement was meant to account for the frequent presence of Oliver Marsham at Beechcote. She had herself met him in the lane riding away from Beechcote no less than three times during the past fortnight.

"Please come in to tea!" said Diana; "I am just expecting my cousin--Miss Merton. Mrs. Colwood and I are so excited!--we have never had a visitor here before. I came out to try and find some snow-drops for her room. There is really nothing in the greenhouses--and I can't make the house look nice."

Certainly as they entered and passed through the panelled hall to the drawing-room Hugh Roughsedge saw no need for apology. Amid the warm dimness of the house he was aware of a few starry flowers, a few gleaming and beautiful stuffs, the white and black of an engraving, or the blurred golds and reds of an old Italian picture, humble school-work perhaps, collected at small cost by Diana's father, yet still breathing the magic of the Enchanted Land. The house was refined, pleading, eager--like its mistress. It made no display--but it admitted no vulgarity. "These things are not here for mere decoration's sake," it seemed to say. "Dear kind hands have touched them; dear silent voices have spoken of them. Love them a little, you also!--and be at home."

Not that Hugh Roughsedge made any such conscious analysis of his impressions. Yet the house appealed to him strangely. He thought Miss Mallory's taste marvellous; and it is one of the superiorities in women to which men submit most readily.

The drawing-room had especially a festive air. Mrs. Colwood was keeping tea-cakes hot, and building up a blazing fire with logs of beech-wood. When she had seated her guests, Diana put the snow-drops she had gathered into an empty vase, and looked round her happily, as though now she had put the last touch to all her preparations. She talked readily of her cousin's coming to Mrs. Roughsedge; and she inquired minutely of Hugh when the next meet was to be, that she might take her guest to see it.

"Fanny will be just as new to it all as I!" she said. "That's so nice, isn't it?" Then she offered Mrs. Roughsedge cake, and looked at her askance with a hanging head. "Have you heard--about the Vicar?"

Mrs. Roughsedge admitted it.

"I did lose my temper," said Diana, repentantly. "But really!--papa used to tell me it was a sign of weakness to say violent things you couldn't prove. Wasn't it Lord Shaftesbury that said some book he didn't like was 'vomited out of the jaws of hell'? Well, the Vicar said things very like that. He did indeed!"

"Oh no, my dear, no!" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, disturbed by the quotation, even, of such a remark. Hugh Roughsedge grinned. Diana, however, insisted.

"Of course, I would have given them up. Only I just happened to say that papa always read everything he could by those two men--and then"--she flushed--"Well, I don't exactly remember what Mr. Lavery said. But I know that when he'd said it I wouldn't have given up either of those books for the world!"

"I hope, Miss Mallory, you won't think of giving them up," said Hugh, with vigor. "It will be an excellent thing for Lavery."

Mrs. Roughsedge, as the habitual peacemaker of the village, said hastily that Dr. Roughsedge should talk to the Vicar. Of course, he must not be allowed to do anything so foolish as to withdraw from the Club, or the Miss Bertrams either."

"Oh! my goodness," cried Diana, hiding her face--and then raising it, crimson. "The Miss Bertrams, too! Why, it's only six weeks since I first came to this place, and now I'm setting it by the ears!"

Her aspect of mingled mirth and dismay had in it something so childish and disarming that Mrs. Roughsedge could only wish the Vicar had been there to see. His heretical parishioner fell into meditation.

"What can I do? If I could only be sure that he would never say things like that to me again--"

"But he will!" said Captain Roughsedge. "Don't give in, Miss Mallory."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Roughsedge, as the door opened, "shall we ask Mr. Marsham?"

Diana turned with a startled movement. It was evident that Marsham was not expected. But Mrs. Roughsedge also inferred from a shrewd observation of her hostess that he was not unwelcome. He had, in fact, looked in on his way home from hunting to give a message from his mother; that, at least, was the pretext. Hugh Roughsedge, reading him with a hostile eye, said to himself that if it hadn't been Lady Lucy it would have been something else. As it happened, he was quite as well aware as his mother that Marsham's visits to Beechcote of late had been far more frequent than mere neighborliness required.

Marsham was in hunting dress, and made his usual handsome and energetic impression. Diana treated him with great self-possession, asking after Mr. Ferrier, who had just returned to Tallyn for the last fortnight before the opening of Parliament, and betraying to the Roughsedges that she was already on intimate terms with Lady Lucy, who was lending her patterns for her embroidery, driving over once or twice a week, and advising her about various household affairs. Mrs. Roughsedge, who had been Diana's first protector, saw herself supplanted--not without a little natural chagrin.

The controversy of the moment was submitted to Marsham, who decided hotly against the Vicar, and implored Diana to stand firm. But somehow his intervention only hastened the compunction that had already begun to work in her. She followed the Roughsedges to the door when they departed.

"What must I do?" she said, sheepishly, to Mrs. Roughsedge. "Write to him?"

"The Vicar? Oh, dear Miss Mallory, the doctor will settle it. You would-change the books?"

"Mother!" cried Hugh Roughsedge, indignantly, "we're all bullied--you know we are--and now you want Miss Mallory bullied too."

"'Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow,'" laughed Marsham, in the background, as he stood toying with his tea beside Mrs. Colwood.

Diana shook her head.

"I can't be friends with him," she said, naively, "for a long long time. But I'll rewrite my list. And must I go and call on the Miss Bertrams to-morrow?"

Her mock and smiling submission, as she stood, slender and lovely, amid the shadows of the hall, seemed to Hugh Roughsedge, as he looked back upon her, the prettiest piece of acting. Then she turned, and he knew that she was going back to Marsham. At the same moment he saw Mrs. Colwood's little figure disappearing up the main stairway. Frowning and silent, he followed his mother out of the house.

Diana looked round rather wistfully for Mrs. Colwood as she re-entered the room; but that lady had many letters to write.

Marsham noticed Mrs. Colwood's retreat with a thrill of pleasure. Yet even now he had no immediate declaration in his mind. The course that he had marked out for himself had been exactly followed. There had been no "hurrying it." Only in these weeks before Parliament, while matters of great moment to his own political future were going forward, and his participation in them was not a whit less cool and keen than it had always been, he had still found abundant time for the wooing of Diana. He had assumed a kind of guardian's attitude in the matter of her relations to the Vavasours--who in business affairs had proved both greedy and muddle-headed; he had flattered her woman's vanity by the insight he had freely allowed her into the possibilities and the difficulties of his own Parliamentary position, and of his relations to Ferrier; and he had kept alive a kind of perpetual interest and flutter in her mind concerning him, by the challenge he was perpetually offering to the opinions and ideas in which she had been brought up--while yet combining it with a respect toward her father's memory, so courteous, and, in truth, sincere, that she was alternately roused and subdued.

On this February evening, it seemed to his exultant sense, as Diana sat chatting to him beside the fire, that his power with her had substantially advanced, that by a hundred subtle signs--quite involuntary on her part--she let him understand that his personality was pressing upon hers, penetrating her will, transforming her gay and fearless composure.

For instance, he had been lending her books representing his own political and social opinions. To her they were anathema. Her father's soul in her regarded them as forces of the pit, rising in ugly clamor to drag down England from her ancient place. But to hate and shudder at them from afar had been comparatively easy. To battle with them at close quarters, as presented by this able and courteous antagonist, who passed so easily and without presumption from the opponent into the teacher, was a more teasing matter. She had many small successes and side-victories, but they soon ceased to satisfy her, in presence of the knowledge and ability of a man who had been ten years in Parliament, and had made for himself--she began to understand--a considerable position there. She was hotly loyal to her own faiths; but she was conscious of what often seemed to her a dangerous and demoralizing interest in his! A demoralizing pleasure, too, in listening--in sometimes laying aside the watchful, hostile air, in showing herself sweet, yielding, receptive.

These melting moods, indeed, were rare. But no one watching the two on this February evening could have failed to see in Diana signs of happiness, of a joyous and growing dependence, of something that refused to know itself, that masqueraded now as this feeling, now as that, yet was all the time stealing upon the sources of life, bewitching blood and brain. Marsham lamented that in ten days he and his mother must be in town for the Parliamentary season. Diana clearly endeavored to show nothing more than a polite regret. But in the half-laughing, half-forlorn requests she made to him for advice in certain practical matters which must be decided in his absence she betrayed herself; and Marsham found it amazingly sweet that she should do so. He said eagerly that he and Lady Lucy must certainly come down to Tallyn every alternate Sunday, so that the various small matters he had made Diana intrust to him--the finding of a new gardener; negotiations with the Vavasours, connected with the cutting of certain trees--or the repairs of a ruinous gable of the house--should still be carried forward with all possible care and speed. Whereupon Diana inquired how such things could possibly engage the time and thought of a politician in the full stream of Parliament.

"They will be much more interesting to me," said Marsham, in a low steady voice, "than anything I shall be doing in Parliament."

Diana rose, in sudden vague terror--as though with the roar in her ears of rapids ahead--murmured some stammering thanks, walked across the room, lowered a lamp which was flaming, and recovered all her smiling self-possession. But she talked no more of her own affairs. She asked him, instead, for news of Miss Vincent.

Marsham answered, with difficulty. If there had been sudden alarm in her, there had been a sudden tumult of the blood in him. He had almost lost his hold upon himself; the great words had been almost spoken.

But when the conversation had been once more guided into normal channels, he felt that he had escaped a risk. No, no, not yet! One false step--one check--and he might still find himself groping in the dark. Better let himself be missed a little!--than move too soon. As to Roughsedge--he had kept his eyes open. There was nothing there.

So he gave what news of Marion Vincent he had to give. She was still in Bethnal Green working at her inquiry, often very ill, but quite indomitable. As soon as Parliament began she had promised to do some secretarial work for Marsham on two or three mornings a week.

"I saw her last week," said Marsham. "She always asks after you."

"I am so glad! I fell in love with her. Surely"--Diana hesitated--"surely--some day--she will marry Mr. Frobisher?"

Marsham shook his head.

"I think she feels herself too frail."

Diana remembered that little scene of intimacy--of tenderness--and Marsham's words stirred about her, as it were, winds of sadness and renunciation. She shivered under them a little, feeling, almost guiltily, the glow of her own life, the passion of her own hopes.

Marsham watched her as she sat on the other side of the fire, her beautiful head a little bent and pensive, the firelight playing on the oval of her cheek. How glad he was that he had not spoken!--that the barrier between them still held. A man may find heaven or hell on the other side of it. But merely to have crossed it makes life the poorer. One more of the great, the irrevocable moments spent and done--yielded to devouring time. He hugged the thought that it was still before him. The very timidity and anxiety he felt were delightful to him; he had never felt them before. And once more--involuntarily, disagreeably--he thought of Alicia Drake, and of the passages between them in the preceding summer.

Alicia was still at Tallyn, and her presence was, in truth, a constant embarrassment to him. Lady Lucy, on the contrary, had a strong sense of family duty toward her young cousin, and liked to have her for long visits at Tallyn or in London. Marsham believed his mother knew nothing of the old flirtation between them. Alicia, indeed, rarely showed any special interest in him now. He admitted her general discretion. Yet occasionally she would put in a claim, a light word, now mocking, now caressing, which betrayed the old intimacy, and Marsham would wince under it. It was like a creeping touch in the dark. He had known what it was to feel both compunction and a kind of fear with regard to Alicia. But, normally, he told himself that both feelings were ridiculous. He had done nothing to compromise either himself or her. He had certainly flirted with Alicia; but he could not honestly feel that the chief part in the matter had been his.

These thoughts passed in a flash. The clock struck, and regretfully he got up to take his leave. Diana rose, too, with a kindling face.

"My cousin will be here directly!" she said, joyously.

"Shall I find her installed when I come next time?"

"I mean to keep her as long--as long--as ever I can!"

Marsham held her hand close and warm a moment, felt her look waver a second beneath his, and then, with a quick and resolute step, he went his way.

He was just putting on his coat in the outer hall when there was a sound of approaching wheels. A carriage stopped at the door, to which the butler hurried. As he opened it Marsham saw in the light of the porch lamp the face of a girl peering out of the carriage window. It was a little awkward. His own horse was held by a groom on the other side of the carriage. There was nothing to do but to wait till the young lady had passed. He drew to one side.

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.

"We are so fond of it already!" said Diana. "Come and get warm." She settled her guest in a chair by the fire, and took a stool beside her. "Did you like Devonshire?"

The girl made a little face.

"It was awfully quiet. Oh, my friends, of course, made a lot of fuss over me--and that kind of thing. But I wouldn't live there, not if you paid me."

"We're very quiet here," said Diana, timidly. She was examining the face beside her, with its bright crude color, its bold eyes, and sulky mouth, slightly underhung.

"Oh, well, you've got some good families about, I guess. I saw one or two awfully smart carriages waiting at the station."

"There are a good many nice people," murmured Diana. "But there is not much going on."

"I expect you could invite a good many here if you wanted," said the girl, once more looking round her. "Whatever made you take this place?"

"I like old things so much," laughed Diana. "Don't you?"

"Well, I don't know. I think there's more style about a new house. You can have electric light and all that sort of thing."

Diana admitted it, and changed the subject. "Had the journey been cold?"

Freezing, said Miss Merton. But a young man had lent her his fur coat to put over her knees, which had improved matters. She laughed--rather consciously.

"He lives near here. I told him I was sure you'd ask him to something, if he called."

"Who was he?"

With much rattling of the bangles on her wrists, Fanny produced a card from her hand-bag. Diana looked at it in dismay. It was the card of a young solicitor whom she had once met at a local tea-party, and decided to avoid thenceforward.

She said nothing, however, and plunged into inquiries as to her aunt and cousins.

"Oh! they're all right. Mother's worried out of her life about money; but, then, we've always been that poor you couldn't skin a cent off us, so that's nothing new."

Diana murmured sympathy. She knew vaguely that her father had done a good deal to subsidize these relations. She could only suppose that in his ignorance he had not done enough.

Meanwhile Fanny Merton had fixed her eyes upon Diana with a curious hostile look, almost a stare, which had entered them as she spoke of the family poverty, and persisted as they travelled from Diana's face and figure to the pretty and spacious room beyond. She examined everything, in a swift keen scrutiny, and then as the pouncing glance came back to her cousin, the girl suddenly exclaimed:

"Goodness! but you are like Aunt Sparling!"

Diana flushed crimson. She drew back and said, hurriedly, to Mrs. Colwood:

"Muriel, would you see if they have taken the luggage up-stairs?"

Mrs. Colwood went at once.

Fanny Merton had herself changed color, and looked a little embarrassed. She did not repeat her remark, but began to take her furs off, to smooth her hair deliberately, and settle her bracelets. Diana came nearer to her as soon as they were alone.

"Do you really think I am like mamma?" she said, tremulously, all her eyes fixed upon her cousin.

"Well, of course I never saw her!" said Miss Merton, looking down at the fire. "How could I? But mother has a picture of her, and you're as like as two peas."

"I never saw any picture of mamma," said Diana; "I don't know at all what she was like."

"Ah, well--" said Miss Merton, still looking down. Then she stopped, and said no more. She took out her handkerchief, and began to rub a spot of mud off her dress. It seemed to Diana that her manner was a little strange, and rather rude. But she had made up her mind there would be peculiarities in Fanny, and she did not mean to be repelled by them.

"Shall I take you to your room?" she said. "You must be tired, and we shall be dining directly."

Miss Merton allowed herself to be led up-stairs, looking curiously round her at every step.

"I say, you must be well off!" she burst out, as they came to the head of the stairs, "or you'd never be able to run a place like this!"

"Papa left me all his money," said Diana, coloring again. "I hope he wouldn't have thought it extravagant."

She passed on in front of her guest, holding a candle. Fanny Merton followed. At Diana's statement as to her father's money the girl's face had suddenly resumed its sly hostility. And as Diana walked before her, Miss Merton again examined the house, the furniture, the pictures; but this time, and unknown to Diana, with the air of one half jealous and half contemptuous of all she saw.

Part II

"The soberest saints are more stiff-neckèd
Than the hottest-headed of the wicked."

CHAPTER VII

"I shall soon be back," said Diana--"very soon. I'll just take this book to Dr. Roughsedge. You don't mind?"

The question was addressed--in a deprecatory tone--to Mrs. Colwood, who stood beside her at the Beechcote front door.

Muriel Colwood smiled, and drew the furs closer round the girl's slim throat.

"I shall mind very much if you don't stay out a full hour and get a good walk."

Diana ran off, followed by her dog. There was something in the manner both of the dog and its mistress that seemed to show impetuous escape--and relief.

"She looks tired out!" said the little companion to herself, as she turned to enter the hall. "How on earth is she going to get through six weeks of it?--or six months!"

The house as she walked back through it made upon her the odd impression of having suddenly lost some of its charm. The peculiar sentiment--as of a warmly human, yet delicately ordered life, which it had breathed out so freely only twenty-four hours before, seemed to her quick feeling to have been somehow obscured or dissipated. All its defects, old or new--the patches in the panelling, the darkness of the passages--stood out.

And "all along of Eliza!" All because of Miss Fanny Merton! Mrs. Colwood recalled the morning--Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table, and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast, partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run," on board the steamer. Diana had then devoted herself to the display of the house, and her maid had helped Miss Merton to unpack. The process had been diversified by raids made by Miss Fanny on Diana's own wardrobe, which she had inspected from end to end, to an accompaniment of critical remark. According to her, there was very little that was really "shick" in it, and Diana should change her dressmaker. The number of her own dresses was large; and as to their colors and make, Mrs. Colwood, who had helped to put away some of them, could only suppose that tropical surroundings made tropical tastes. At the same time the contrast between Miss Fanny's wardrobe, and what she herself reported, in every tone of grievance and disgust, of the family poverty, was surprising, though no doubt a great deal of the finery had been as cheaply bought as possible.

By luncheon-time Diana had shown some symptoms of fatigue, perhaps--Mrs. Colwood hoped!--of revolt. She had been already sharply questioned as to the number of servants she kept and the wages they received, as to the people in the neighborhood who gave parties, and the ages and incomes of such young or unmarried men as might be met with at these parties. Miss Merton had boasted already of two love-affairs--one the unsuccessful engagement in Barbadoes, the other--"a near thing"--which had enlivened the voyage to England; and she had extracted a promise from Diana to ask the young solicitor she had met with in the train--Mr. Fred Birch--to lunch, without delay. Meanwhile she had not--of her own initiative--said one word of those educational objects, in pursuit of which she was supposed to have come to England. Diana had proposed to her the names of certain teachers both of music and languages--names which she had obtained with much trouble. Miss Fanny had replied, rather carelessly, that she would think about it.

It was at this that the eager sweetness of Diana's manner to her cousin had shown its first cooling. And Mrs. Colwood had curiously observed that at the first sign of shrinking on her part, Miss Fanny's demeanor had instantly changed. It had become sugared and flattering to a degree. Everything in the house was "sweet"; the old silver used at table, with the Mallory crest, was praised extravagantly; the cooking no less. Yet still Diana's tired silence had grown; and the watching eyes of this amazing young woman had been, in Mrs. Colwood's belief, now insolently and now anxiously, aware of it.

Insolence!--that really, if one came to think of it, had been the note of Miss Merton's whole behavior from the beginning--an ill-concealed, hardly restrained insolence, toward the girl, two years older than herself, who had received her with such tender effusion, and was, moreover, in a position to help her so materially. What could it--what did it mean?

Mrs. Colwood stood at the foot of the stairs a moment, lost in a trance of wonderment. Her heart was really sore for Diana's disappointment, for the look in her face, as she left the house. How on earth could the visit be shortened and the young lady removed?

The striking of three o'clock reminded Muriel Colwood that she was to take the new-comer out for an hour. They had taken coffee in the morning-room up-stairs, Diana's own sitting-room, where she wrote her letters and followed out the lines of reading her father had laid down for her. Mrs. Colwood returned thither; found Miss Merton, as it seemed to her, in the act of examining the letters in Diana's blotting-book; and hastily proposed to her to take a turn in the garden.

Fanny Merton hesitated, looked at Mrs. Colwood a moment dubiously, and finally walked up to her.

"Oh, I don't care about going out, it's so cold and nasty. And, besides, I--I want to talk to you."

"Miss Mallory thought you might like to see the old gardens," said Mrs. Colwood. "But if you would rather not venture out, I'm afraid I must go and write some letters."

"Why, you were writing letters all the morning! My fingers would drop off if I was to go on at it like that. Do you like being a companion? I should think it was rather beastly--if you ask me. At home they did talk about it for me. But I said: 'No, thank you! My own mistress, if you please!'"

The speaker sat down by the fire, raised her skirt of purple cloth, and stretched a pair of shapely feet to the warmth. Her look was good-humored and lazy.

"I am very happy here," said Mrs. Colwood, quietly. "Miss Mallory is so charming and so kind."

Miss Fanny cleared her throat, poked the fire with the tip of her shoe, fidgeted with her dress, and finally said--abruptly:

"I say--have all the people about here called?"

The tone was so low and furtive that Mrs. Colwood, who had been putting away some embroidery silks which had been left on the table by Diana, turned in some astonishment. She found the girl's eyes fixed upon her--eager and hungry.

"Miss Mallory has had a great many visitors"--she tried to pitch her words in the lightest possible tone--"I am afraid it will take her a long time to return all her calls."

"Well, I'm glad it's all right about that!--anyway. As mamma said, you never know. People are so queer about these things, aren't they? As if it was Diana's fault!"

Through all her wrath, Muriel Colwood was conscious of a sudden pang of alarm--which was, in truth, the reawakening of something already vaguely felt or surmised. She looked rather sternly at her companion.

"I really don't know what you mean, Miss Merton. And I never discuss Miss Mallory's affairs. Perhaps you will kindly allow me to go to my letters."

She was moving away when the girl beside her laughed again--rather angrily--and Mrs. Colwood paused, touched again by instinctive fear.

"Oh, of course if I'm not to say a word about it--I'm not--that's all! Well, now, look here--Diana needn't suppose that I've come all this way just for fun. I had to say that about lessons, and that kind of thing--I didn't want to set her against me--but I've ... Well!--why should I be ashamed, I should like to know?"--she broke out, shrilly, sitting erect, her face flushing deeply, her eyes on fire. "If some one owes you something--why shouldn't you come and get it? Diana owes my mother money!--a lot of money!--and we can't afford to lose it. Mother's awfully sweet about Diana--she said, 'Oh no, it's unkind'--but I say it's unkind to us, not to speak, when we all want money so bad--and there are the boys to bring up--and--"

"Miss Merton--I'm very sorry--but really I cannot let you talk to me of Miss Mallory's private affairs. It would neither be right--nor honorable. You must see that. She will be in by tea-time herself. Please!--"

Muriel's tone was gentle; but her attitude was resolution itself. Fanny Merton stared at the frail slim creature in her deep widow's black; her color rose.

"Oh, very well. Do as you like!--I'm agreeable! Only I thought perhaps--as you and Diana seem to be such tremendous friends--you'd like to talk it over with me first. I don't know how much Diana knows; and I thought perhaps you'd give me a hint. Of course, she'll know all there was in the papers. But my mother claims a deal more than the trust money--jewels, and that kind of thing. And Uncle Mallory treated us shamefully about them--shamefully! That's why I'm come over. I made mother let me! Oh, she's so soft, is mother, she'd let anybody off. But I said, 'Diana's rich, and she ought to make it up to us! If nobody else'll ask her, I will!'"

The girl had grown pale, but it was a pallor of determination and of passion. Mrs. Colwood had listened to the torrent of words, held against her will, first by astonishment, then by something else. If it should be her duty to listen?--for the sake of this young life, which in these few weeks had so won upon her heart?

She retraced a few steps.

"Miss Merton, I do not understand what you have been saying. If you have any claim upon Miss Mallory, you know well that she is the soul of honor and generosity. Her one desire is to give everybody more than their due. She is too generous--I often have to protect her. But, as I have said before, it is not for me to discuss any claim you may have upon her."

Fanny Merton was silent for a minute--staring at her companion. Then she said, abruptly:

"Does she ever talk to you about Aunt Sparling?"

"Her mother?"

The girl nodded.

Mrs. Colwood hesitated--then said, unwillingly: "No. She has mentioned her once or twice. One can see how she missed her as a child--how she misses her still."

"Well, I don't know what call she has to miss her!" cried Fanny Merton, in a note of angry scorn. "A precious good thing she died when she did--for everybody."

Mrs. Colwood felt her hands trembling. In the growing darkness of the winter afternoon it seemed to her startled imagination as though this black-eyed black-browed girl, with her scowling passionate face, were entering into possession of the house and of Diana--an evil and invading power. She tried to choose her words carefully.

"Miss Mallory has never talked to me of her parents. And, if you will excuse me, Miss Merton--if there is anything sad--or tragic--in their history, I would rather hear it from Miss Mallory than from you!"

"Anything sad?--anything sad? Well, upon my word!--"

The girl breathed fast. So, involuntarily, did Mrs. Colwood.

"You don't mean to say"--the speaker threw her body forward, and brought her face close to Mrs. Colwood--"you are not going to tell me that you don't know about Diana's mother?"

She laid her hand upon Muriel's dress.

"Why should I know? Please, Miss Merton!" and with a resolute movement Mrs. Colwood tried to withdraw her dress.

"Why, everybody knows!--everybody!--everybody! Ask anybody in the world about Juliet Sparling--and you'll see. In the saloon, coming over, I heard people talk about her all one night--they didn't know who I was--and of course I didn't tell. And there was a book in the ship's library--Famous Trials--or some name of that sort--with the whole thing in it. You don't know--about--Diana's mother?"

The fierce, incredulous emphasis on the last word, for a moment, withered all reply on Mrs. Colwood's lips. She walked to the door mechanically, to see that it was fast shut. Then she returned. She sat down beside Diana's guest, and it might have been seen that she had silenced fear and dismissed hesitation. "After all," she said, with quiet command, "I think I will ask you, Miss Merton, to explain what you mean?"

The February afternoon darkened round the old house. There was a light powdering of snow on grass and trees. Yet still there were breathings and bird-notes in the air, and tones of color in the distance, which obscurely prophesied the spring. Through the wood behind the house the snow-drops were rising, in a white invading host, over the ground covered with the red-brown deposit of innumerable autumns. Above their glittering white, rose an undergrowth of laurels and box, through which again shot up the magnificent trunks--gray and smooth and round--of the great beeches, which held and peopled the country-side, heirs of its ancestral forest. Any one standing in the wood could see, through the leafless trees, the dusky blues and rich violets of the encircling hill--hung there, like the tapestry of some vast hall; or hear from time to time the loud wings of the wood-pigeons as they clattered through the topmost boughs.

Diana was still in the village. She had been spending her hour of escape mostly with the Roughsedges. The old doctor among his books was now sufficiently at his ease with her to pet her, teach her, and, when necessary, laugh at her. And Mrs. Roughsedge, however she might feel herself eclipsed by Lady Lucy, was, in truth, much more fit to minister to such ruffled feelings as Diana was now conscious of than that delicate and dignified lady. Diana's disillusion about her cousin was, so far, no very lofty matter. It hurt; but on her run to the village the natural common-sense Mrs. Colwood had detected had wrestled stoutly with her wounded feelings. Better take it with a laugh! To laugh, however, one must be distracted; and Mrs. Roughsedge, bubbling over with gossip and good-humor, was distraction personified. Stern Justice, in the person of Lord M.'s gamekeeper, had that morning brought back Diana's two dogs in leash, a pair of abject and convicted villains, from the delirium of a night's hunting. The son of Miss Bertram's coachman had only just missed an appointment under the District Council by one place on the list of candidates. A "Red Van" bursting with Socialist literature had that morning taken up its place on the village green; and Diana's poor housemaid, in payment for a lifetime's neglect, must now lose every tooth in her head, according to the verdict of the local dentist, an excellent young man, in Mrs. Roughsedge's opinion, but ready to give you almost too much pulling out for your money. On all these topics she overflowed--with much fun and unfailing good-humor. So that after half an hour spent with Mrs. Roughsedge and Hugh in the little drawing-room at the White Cottage, Diana's aspect was very different from what it had been when she arrived.

Hugh, however, had noticed her pallor and depression. He was obstinately certain that Oliver Marsham was not the man to make such a girl happy. Between the rich Radical member and the young officer--poor, slow of speech and wits, and passionately devoted to the old-fashioned ideals and traditions in which he had been brought up--there was a natural antagonism. But Roughsedge's contempt for his brilliant and successful neighbor--on the ground of selfish ambitions and unpatriotic trucklings--was, in truth, much more active than anything Marsham had ever shown--or felt--toward himself. For in the young soldier there slept potentialities of feeling and of action, of which neither he nor others were as yet aware.

Nevertheless, he faced the facts. He remembered the look with which Diana had returned to the Beechcote drawing-room, where Marsham awaited her, the day before--and told himself not to be a fool.

Meanwhile he had found an opportunity in which to tell her, unheard by his parents, that he was practically certain of his Nigerian appointment, and must that night break it to his father and mother. And Diana had listened like a sister, all sympathy and kind looks, promising in the young man's ear, as he said good-bye at the garden gate, that she would come again next day to cheer his mother up.

He stood looking after her as she walked away; his hands in his pockets, a flush on his handsome face. How her coming had glorified and transformed the place! No womanish nonsense, too, about this going of his!--though she knew well that it meant fighting. Only a kindling of the eyes--a few questions as practical as they were eager--and then that fluttering of the soft breath which he had noticed as she bent over his mother.

But she was not for him! Thus it is that women--the noblest and the dearest--throw themselves away. She, with all the right and proper feelings of an Englishwoman, to mate with this plausible Radical and Little Englander! Hugh kicked the stones of the gravel savagely to right and left as he walked back to the house--in a black temper with his poverty and Diana's foolishness.

But was she really in love? "Why then so pale, fond lover?" He found a kind of angry comfort in the remembrance of her drooping looks. They were no credit to Marsham, anyway.

Meanwhile Diana walked home, lingering by the way in two or three cottages. She was shyly beginning to make friends with the people. An old road-mender kept her listening while he told her how a Tallyn keeper had peppered him in the eye, ten years before, as he was crossing Barrow Common at dusk. One eye had been taken out, and the other was almost useless; there he sat, blind, and cheerfully telling the tale--"Muster Marsham--Muster Henry Marsham--had been verra kind--ten shillin' a week, and an odd job now and then. I do suffer terr'ble, miss, at times--but ther's noa good in grumblin'--is there?"

Next door, in a straggling line of cottages, she found a gentle, chattering widow whose husband had been drowned in the brew-house at Beechcote twenty years before, drowned in the big vat!--before any one had heard a cry or a sound. The widow was proud of so exceptional a tragedy; eager to tell the tale. How had she lived since? Oh, a bit here and a bit there. And, of late, half a crown from the parish.

Last of all, in a cottage midway between the village and Beechcote, she paused to see a jolly middle-aged woman, with a humorous eye and a stream of conversation--held prisoner by an incurable disease. She was absolutely alone in the world. Nobody knew what she had to live on. But she could always find a crust for some one more destitute than herself, and she ranked high among the wits of the village. To Diana she talked of her predecessors--the Vavasours--whose feudal presence seemed to be still brooding over the village. With little chuckles of laughter, she gave instance after instance of the tyranny with which they had lorded it over the country-side in early Victorian days: how the "Madam Vavasour" of those days had pulled the feathers from the village-girls' hats, and turned a family who had offended her, with all their belongings, out into the village street. But when Diana rejoiced that such days were done, the old woman gave a tolerant: "Noa--noa! They were none so bad--were t' Vavasours. Only they war no good at heirin."

"Airing?" said Diana, mystified.

"Heirin," repeated Betty Dyson, emphatically. "Theer was old Squire Henry--wi' noabody to follow 'im--an' Mr. Edward noa better--and now thissun, wi nobbut lasses. Noa--they war noa good at heirin--moor's t' pity." Then she looked slyly at her companion: "An' yo', miss? yo'll be gettin' married one o' these days, I'll uphowd yer."