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 Nike—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 demettre!—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 tete-a-tete with her new charge was to be so soon interrupted, and for an indefinite period, by a young lady with the handwriting 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 Egalite 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."