"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 anaemia, 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 mesalliance—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 L18,000 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-necked 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."

Diana colored and laughed.

"Ay," said the old woman, laughing too, with the merriment of a girl. "Sweethearts is noa good—but you mun ha' a sweetheart!"

Diana fled, pursued by Betty's raillery, and then by the thought of this lonely laughing woman, often tormented by pain, standing on the brink of ugly death, and yet turning back to look with this merry indulgent eye upon the past; and on this dingy old world, in which she had played so ragged and limping a part. Yet clearly she would play it again if she could—so sweet is mere life!—and so hard to silence in the breast.

Diana walked quickly through the woods, the prey of one of those vague storms of feeling which test and stretch the soul of youth.

To what horrors had she been listening?—the suffering of the blinded road-mender—the grotesque and hideous death of the young laborer in his full strength—the griefs of a childless and penniless old woman? Yet life had somehow engulfed the horrors; and had spread its quiet waves above them, under a pale, late-born sunshine. The stoicism of the poor rebuked her, as she thought of the sharp impatience and disappointment in which she had parted from Mrs. Colwood.

She seemed to hear her father's voice. "No shirking, Diana! You asked her—you formed absurd and exaggerated expectations. She is here; and she is not responsible for your expectations. Make the best of her, and do your duty!"

And eagerly the child's heart answered: "Yes, yes, papa!—dear papa!"

And there, sharp in color and line, it rose on the breast of memory, the beloved face. It set pulses beating in Diana which from her childhood onward had been a life within her life, a pain answering to pain, the child's inevitable response to the father's misery, always discerned, never understood.

This abiding remembrance of a dumb unmitigable grief beside which she had grown up, of which she had never known the secret, was indeed one of the main factors in Diana's personality. Muriel Colwood had at once perceived it; Marsham had been sometimes puzzled by the signs of it.

To-day—because of Fanny and this toppling of her dreams—the dark mood, to which Diana was always liable, had descended heavily upon her. She had no sooner rebuked it—by the example of the poor, or the remembrance of her father's long patience—than she was torn by questions, vehement, insistent, full of a new anguish.

Why had her father been so unhappy? What was the meaning of that cloud under which she had grown up?

She had repeated to Muriel Colwood the stock explanations she had been accustomed to give herself of the manner and circumstances of her bringing-up. To-day they seemed to her own mind, for the first time, utterly insufficient. In a sudden crash and confusion of feeling it was as though she were tearing open the heart of the past, passionately probing and searching.

Certain looks and phrases of Fanny Merton were really working in her memory. They were so light—yet so ugly. They suggested something, but so vaguely that Diana could find no words for it: a note of desecration, of cheapening—a breath of dishonor. It was as though a mourner, shut in for years with sacred memories, became suddenly aware that all the time, in a sordid world outside, these very memories had been the sport of an unkind and insolent chatter that besmirched them.

Her mother!

In the silence of the wood the girl's slender figure stiffened itself against an attacking thought. In her inmost mind she knew well that it was from her mother—and her mother's death—that all the strangeness of the past descended. But yet the death and grief she remembered had never presented themselves to her as they appear to other bereaved ones. Why had nobody ever spoken to her of her mother in her childhood and youth?—neither father, nor nurses, nor her old French governess? Why had she no picture—no relics—no letters? In the box of "Sparling Papers" there was nothing that related to Mrs. Sparling; that she knew, for her father had abruptly told her so not long before his death. They were old family records which he could not bear to destroy—the honorable records of an upright race, which some day, he thought, "might be a pleasure to her."

Often during the last six months of his life, it seemed to her now, in this intensity of memory, that he had been on the point of breaking the silence of a lifetime. She recalled moments and looks of agonized effort and yearning. But he died of a growth in the throat; and for weeks before the end speech was forbidden them, on account of the constant danger of hemorrhage. So that Diana had always felt herself starved of those last words and messages which make the treasure of bereaved love. Often and often the cry of her loneliness to her dead father had been the bitter cry of Andromache to Hector; "I had from thee, in dying, no memorable word on which I might ever think in the year of mourning while I wept for thee."

Had there been a quarrel between her father and mother?—or something worse?—at which Diana's ignorance of life, imposed upon her by her upbringing, could only glance in shuddering? She knew her mother had died at twenty-six; and that in the two years before her death Mr. Mallory had been much away, travelling and exploring in Asia Minor. The young wife must have been often alone. Diana, with a sudden catching of the breath, envisaged possibilities of which no rational being of full age who reads a newspaper can be unaware.

Then, with an inward passion of denial, she shook the whole nightmare from her. Outrage!—treason!—to those helpless memories of which she was now the only guardian. In these easy, forgetting days, when the old passions and endurances look to us either affected or eccentric, such a life, such an exile as her father's, may seem strange even—so she accused herself—to that father's child. But that is because we are mean souls beside those who begot us. We cannot feel as they; and our constancy, compared to theirs, is fickleness.

So, in spirit, she knelt again beside her dead, embracing their cold feet and asking pardon.

The tears clouded her eyes; she wandered blindly on through the wood till she was conscious of sudden light and space. She had come to a clearing, where several huge beeches had been torn up by a storm some years before. Their place had been filled by a tangle of many saplings, and in their midst rose an elder-bush, already showing leaf, amid the bare winterly wood. The last western light caught the twinkling leaf buds, and made of the tree a Burning Bush, first herald of the spring.

The sight of it unloosed some swell of passion in Diana; she found herself smiling amid her tears, and saying incoherent things that only the wood caught.

To-day was the meeting of Parliament. She pictured the scene. Marsham was there, full of projects and ambitions. Innocently, exultantly, she reminded herself how much she knew of them. If he could not have her sympathy, he must have her antagonism. But no chilling exclusions and reserves! Rather, a generous confidence on his side; and a gradual, a child-like melting and kindling on hers. In politics she would never agree with him—never!—she would fight him with all her breath and strength. But not with the methods of Mrs. Fotheringham. No!—what have politics to do with—with—

She dropped her face in her hands, laughing to herself, the delicious tremors of first love running through her. Would she hear from him? She understood she was to be written to, though she had never asked it. But ought she to allow it? Was it convenable? She knew that girls now did what they liked—threw all the old rules overboard. But—proudly—she stood by the old rules; she would do nothing "fast" or forward. Yet she was an orphan—standing alone; surely for her there might be more freedom than for others?

She hurried home. With the rush of new happiness had come back the old pity, the old yearning. It wasn't, wasn't Fanny's fault! She—Diana—had always understood that Mr. Merton was a vulgar, grasping man of no breeding who had somehow entrapped "your aunt Bertha—who was very foolish and very young"—into a most undesirable marriage. As for Mrs. Merton—Aunt Bertha—Fanny had with her many photographs, among them several of her mother. A weak, heavy face, rather pretty still. Diana had sought her own mother in it, with a passionate yet shrinking curiosity, only to provoke a rather curt reply from Fanny, in answer to a question she had, with difficulty, brought herself to put:

"Not a bit! There wasn't a scrap of likeness between mother and Aunt Sparling."

* * * * *

The evening passed off better than the morning had done. Eyes more acute in her own interests than Diana's might have perceived a change in Fanny Merton, after her long conversation with Mrs. Colwood. A certain excitement, a certain triumph, perhaps an occasional relenting and compunction: all these might have been observed or guessed. She made herself quite amiable: showed more photographs, talked still more frankly of her card-winnings on the steamer, and of the flirtation which had beguiled the voyage; bespoke the immediate services of Diana's maid for a dress that must be done up; and expressed a desire for another and a bigger wardrobe in her room. Gradually a tone of possession, almost of command, crept in. Diana, astonished and amused, made no resistance. These, she supposed, were West-Indian manners. The Colonies are like healthy children that submit in their youth, and then grow up and order the household about. What matter!

Meanwhile Mrs. Colwood looked a little pale, and confessed to a headache. Diana was pleased, however, to see that she and Fanny were getting on better than had seemed to be probable in the morning. Fanny wished—nay, was resolved—to be entertained and amused, Mrs. Colwood threw herself with new zest into the various plans Diana had made for her cousin. There was to be a luncheon-party, an afternoon tea, and so forth. Only Diana, pricked by a new mistrust, said nothing in public about an engagement she had (to spend a Saturday-to-Monday with Lady Lucy at Tallyn three weeks later), though she and Muriel made anxious plans as to what could be done to amuse Fanny during the two days.

Diana was alone in her room at night when Mrs. Colwood knocked. Would Diana give her some lavender-water?—her headache was still severe. Diana new to minister to her; but, once admitted, Muriel said no more of her headache. Rather she began to soothe and caress Diana. Was she in better spirits? Let her only intrust the entertaining of Fanny Merton to her friend and companion—Mrs. Colwood would see to it. Diana laughed, and silenced her with a kiss.

Presently they were sitting by the fire, Muriel Colwood in a large arm-chair, a frail, fair creature, with her large dark-circled eyes, and her thin hands and arms; Diana kneeling beside her.

"I had no idea what a poison poverty could be!" said Muriel, abruptly, with her gaze on the fire.

"My cousin?" Diana looked up startled. "Was that what she was saying to you?"

Muriel nodded assent. Her look—so anxious and tender—held, enveloped her companion.

"Are they in debt?" said Diana, slowly.

"Terribly. They seem to be going to break up their home."

"Did she tell you all about it?"

Mrs. Colwood hesitated.

"A great deal more than I wanted to know!" she said, at last, as though the words broke from her.

Diana thought a little.

"I wonder—whether that was—what she came home for?"

Mrs. Colwood moved uneasily.

"I suppose if you are in those straits you don't really think of anything else—though you may wish to."

"Did she tell you how much they want?" said Diana, quickly.

"She named a thousand pounds!"

Muriel might have been describing her own embarrassments, so scarlet had she become.

"A thousand pounds!" cried Diana, in amazement. "But then why—why—does she have so many frocks—and play cards for money—and bet on races?"

She threw her arms round Mrs. Colwood's knees impetuously.

Muriel's small hand smoothed back the girl's hair, timidly yet eagerly.

"I suppose that's the way they've been brought up."

"A thousand pounds! And does she expect me to provide it?"

"I am afraid—she hopes it."

"But I haven't got it!" cried Diana, sitting down on the floor. "I've spent more than I ought on this place; I'm overdrawn; I ought to be economical for a long time. You know, Muriel, I'm not really rich."

Mrs. Colwood colored deeper than ever. But apparently she could think of nothing to say. Her eyes were riveted on her companion.

"No, I'm not rich," resumed Diana, with a frown, drawing circles on the ground with her finger. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have taken this house. I dare say it was horrid of me. But I couldn't have known—could I?—that Fanny would be coming and want a thousand pounds?"

She looked up expecting sympathy—perhaps a little indignation. Mrs. Colwood only said:

"I suppose she would not have come over—if things had not been very bad."

"Why didn't she give me some warning?" cried Diana—"instead of talking about French lessons! But am I bound—do you think I am bound?—to give the Mertons a thousand pounds? I know papa got tired of giving them money. I wonder if it's right!"

She frowned. Her voice was a little stern. Her eyes flashed.

Mrs. Colwood again touched her hair with a hand that trembled.

"They are your only relations, aren't they?" she said, pleadingly.

"Yes," said Diana, still with the same roused look.

"Perhaps it would set them on their feet altogether."

The girl gave a puzzled laugh.

"Did she—Muriel, did she ask you to tell me?"

"I think she wanted me to break it to you," said Mrs. Colwood, after a moment. "And I thought it—it might save you pain."

"Just like you!" Diana stooped to kiss her hand. "That's what your headache meant! Well, but now—ought I—ought I—to do it?"

She clasped her hands round her knees and swayed backward and forward—pondering—with a rather sombre brow. Mrs. Colwood's expression was hidden in the darkness of the big chair.

"—Always supposing I can do it," resumed Diana. "And I certainly couldn't do it at once; I haven't got it. I should have to sell something, or borrow from the bank. No, I must think—I must think over it," she added more resolutely, as though her way cleared.

"Of course," said Mrs. Colwood, faintly. Then she raised herself. "Let me tell her so—let me save you the conversation."

"You dear!—but why should you!" said Diana, in amazement.

"Let me."

"If you like! But I can't have Fanny making you look like this. Please, please go to bed."

* * * * *

An hour later Mrs. Colwood, in her room, was still up and dressed, hanging motionless, and deep in thought, over the dying fire. And before she went to sleep—far in the small hours—her pillow was wet with crying.



CHAPTER VIII

"I thought I'd perhaps better let you know—I'm—well, I'm going to have a talk with Diana this morning!"

The voice was determined. Muriel Colwood—startled and dismayed—surveyed the speaker. She had been waylaid on the threshold of her room. The morning was half-way through. Visitors, including Mr. Fred Birch, were expected to lunch, and Miss Merton, who had been lately invisible, had already, she saw, changed her dress. At breakfast, it seemed to Mrs. Colwood, she had been barely presentable: untidy hair, a dress with various hooks missing, and ruffles much in need of washing. Muriel could only suppose that the carelessness of her attire was meant to mark the completeness of her conquest of Beechcote. But now her gown of scarlet velveteen, her arms bare to the elbow, her frizzled and curled hair, the powder which gave a bluish white to her complexion, the bangles and beads which adorned her, showed her armed to the last pin for the encounters of the luncheon-table.

Mrs. Colwood, however, after a first dazzled look at what she wore, thought only of what she said. She hurriedly drew the girl into her own room, and shut the door. When, after some conversation, Fanny emerged, Mrs. Colwood was left in a state of agitation that was partly fear, partly helpless indignation. During the fortnight since Miss Merton's arrival all the energies of the house had been devoted to her amusement. A little whirlwind of dissipation had blown through the days. Two meets, a hockey-match, a concert at the neighboring town, a dinner-party and various "drums," besides a luncheon-party and afternoon tea at Beechcote itself in honor of the guest—Mrs. Colwood thought the girl might have been content! But she had examined everything presented to her with a very critical eye, and all through it had been plain that she was impatient and dissatisfied; for, inevitably, her social success was not great. Diana, on the other hand, was still a new sensation, and something of a queen wherever she went. Her welcoming eyes, her impetuous smile drew a natural homage; and Fanny followed sulkily in her wake, accepted—not without surprise—as Miss Mallory's kinswoman, but distinguished by no special attentions.

In any case, she would have rebelled against the situation. Her vanity was amazing, her temper violent. At home she had been treated as a beauty, and had ruled the family with a firm view to her own interests. What in Alicia Drake was disguised by a thousand subleties of class and training was here seen in its crudest form. But there was more besides—miserably plain now to this trembling spectator. The resentment of Diana's place in life, as of something robbed, not earned—the scarcely concealed claim either to share it or attack it—these things were no longer riddles to Muriel Colwood. Rather they were the storm-signs of a coming tempest, already darkening above an innocent head.

What could she do? The little lady gave her days and nights to the question, and saw no way out. Sometimes she hoped that Diana's personality had made an impression on this sinister guest; she traced a grudging consciousness in Fanny of her cousin's generosity and charm. But this perception only led to fresh despondency. Whenever Fanny softened, it showed itself in a claim to intimacy, as sudden and as violent as her ill-temper. She must be Diana's first and dearest—be admitted to all Diana's secrets and friendships. Then on Diana's side, inevitable withdrawal, shrinking, self-defence—and on Fanny's a hotter and more acrid jealousy.

Meanwhile, as Mrs. Colwood knew, Diana had been engaged in correspondence with her solicitors, who had been giving her some prudent and rather stringent advice on the subject of income and expenditure. This morning, so Mrs. Colwood believed, a letter had arrived.

Presently she stole out of her room to the head of the stairs. There she remained, pale and irresolute, for a little while, listening to the sounds in the house. But the striking of the hall clock, the sighing of a stormy wind round the house, and, occasionally, a sound of talking in the drawing-room, was all she heard.

* * * * *

Diana had been busy in the hanging of some last pictures in the drawing-room—photographs from Italian pictures and monuments. They had belonged to her father, and had been the dear companions of her childhood. Each, as she handled it, breathed its own memory; of the little villa on the Portofino road, with its green shutters, and rooms closed against the sun; or of the two short visits to Lucca and Florence she had made with her father.

Among the photographs was one of the "Annunciation" by Donatello, which glorifies the southern wall of Santa Croce. Diana had just hung it in a panelled corner, where its silvery brilliance on dark wood made a point of pleasure for the eye. She lingered before it, wondering whether it would please him when he came. Unconsciously her life had slipped into this habit of referring all its pains and pleasures to the unseen friend—holding with him that constant dialogue of the heart without which love neither begins nor grows.

Yet she no longer dreamed of discussing Fanny, and the perplexities Fanny had let loose on Beechcote, with the living Marsham. Money affairs must be kept to one's self; and somehow Fanny's visit had become neither more nor less than a money affair.

That morning Diana had received a letter from old Mr. Riley, the head of the firm of Riley & Bonner—a letter which was almost a lecture. If the case were indeed urgent, said Mr. Riley, if the money must be found, she could, of course, borrow on her securities, and the firm would arrange it for her. But Mr. Riley, excusing himself as her father's old friend, wrote with his own hand to beg her to consider the matter further. Her expenses had lately been many, and some of her property might possibly decline in value during the next few years. A prudent management of her affairs was really essential. Could not the money be gradually saved out of income?

Diana colored uncomfortably as she thought of the letter. What did the dear old man suppose she wanted the money for? It hurt her pride that she must appear in this spendthrift light to eyes so honest and scrupulous.

But what could she do? Fanny poured out ugly reports of her mother's financial necessities to Muriel Colwood; Mrs. Colwood repeated them to Diana. And the Mertons were Diana's only kinsfolk. The claim of blood pressed her hard.

Meanwhile, with a shrinking distaste, she had tried to avoid the personal discussion of the matter with Fanny. The task of curbing the girl's impatience, day after day, had fallen to Mrs. Colwood.

Diana was still standing in a reverie before the "Annunciation" when the drawing-room door opened. As she looked round her, she drew herself sharply together with the movement of a sudden and instinctive antipathy.

"That's all right," said Fanny Merton, surveying the room with satisfaction, and closing the door behind her. "I thought I'd find you alone."

Diana remained nervously standing before the picture, awaiting her cousin, her eyes wider than usual, one hand at her throat.

"Look here," said Fanny, approaching her, "I want to talk to you."

Diana braced herself. "All right." She threw a look at the clock. "Just give me time to get tidy before lunch."

"Oh, there's an hour—time enough!"

Diana drew forward an arm-chair for Fanny, and settled herself into the corner of a sofa. Her dog jumped up beside her, and laid his nose on her lap.

Fanny held herself straight. Her color under the powder had heightened a little. The two girls confronted each other, and, vaguely, perhaps, each felt the strangeness of the situation. Fanny was twenty, Diana twenty-three. They were of an age when girls are generally under the guidance or authority of their elders; comparatively little accustomed, in the normal family, to discuss affairs or take independent decisions. Yet here they met, alone and untrammelled; as hostess and guest in the first place; as kinswomen, yet comparative strangers to each other, and conscious of a secret dislike, each for the other. On the one side, an exultant and partly cruel consciousness of power; on the other, feelings of repugnance and revolt, only held in check by the forces of a tender and scrupulous nature.

Fanny cleared her throat.

"Well, of course, Mrs. Colwood's told me all you've been saying to her. And I don't say I'm surprised."

Diana opened her large eyes.

"Surprised at what?"

"Surprised—well!—surprised you didn't see your way all at once, and that kind of thing. I know I'd want to ask a lot of questions—shouldn't I, just! Why, that's what I expected. But, you see, my time in England's getting on. I've nothing to say to my people, and they bother my life out every mail."

"What did you really come to England for?" said Diana, in a low voice. Her attitude, curled up among the cushions of the sofa, gave her an almost childish air. Fanny, on the other hand, resplendent in her scarlet dress and high coiffure, might have been years older than her cousin. And any stranger watching the face in which the hardness of an "old campaigner" already strove with youth, would have thought her, and not Diana, the mistress of the house.

At Diana's question, Fanny's eyes flickered a moment.

"Oh, well, I had lots of things in my mind. But it was the money that mattered most."

"I see," murmured Diana.

Fanny fidgeted a little with one of the three bead necklaces which adorned her. Then she broke out:

"Look here, Diana, you've never been poor in your life, so you don't know what it's like being awfully hard up. But ever since father died, mother's had a frightful lot of trouble—all of us to keep, and the boys' schooling to pay, and next to nothing to do it on. Father left everything in a dreadful muddle. He never had a bit of sense—"

Diana made a sudden movement. Fanny looked at her astonished, expecting her to speak. Diana, however, said nothing, and the girl resumed:

"I mean, in business. He'd got everything into a shocking state, and instead of six hundred a year for us—as we'd always been led on to expect—well, there wasn't three! Then, you know, Uncle Mallory used to send us money. Well" (she cleared her throat again and looked away from Diana), "about a year before he died he and father fell out about something—so that didn't come in any more. Then we thought perhaps he'd remember us in his will. And that was another disappointment. So, you see, really mother didn't know where to turn."

"I suppose papa thought he had done all he could," said Diana, in a voice which tried to keep quite steady. "He never denied any claim he felt just. I feel I must say that, because you seem to blame papa. But, of course, I am very sorry for Aunt Bertha."

At the words "claim" and "just" there was a quick change of expression in Fanny's eyes. She broke out angrily: "Well, you really don't know about it, Diana, so it's no good talking. And I'm not going to rake up old things—"

"But if I don't know," said Diana, interrupting, "hadn't you better tell me? Why did papa and Uncle Merton disagree? And why did you think papa ought to have left you money?" She bent forward insistently. There was a dignity—perhaps also a touch of haughtiness—in her bearing which exasperated the girl beside her. The haughtiness was that of one who protects the dead. But Fanny's mind was not one that perceived the finer shades.

"Well, I'm not going to say!" said Fanny, with vehemence. "But I can tell you, mother has a claim!—and Uncle Mallory ought to have left us something!"

The instant the words were out she regretted them. Diana abandoned her childish attitude. She drew herself together, and sat upright on the edge of the sofa. The color had come flooding back hotly into her cheeks, and the slightly frowning look produced by the effort to see the face before her distinctly gave a peculiar intensity to the eyes.

"Fanny, please!—you must tell me why!"

The tone, resolute, yet appealing, put Fanny in an evident embarrassment.

"Well, I can't," she said, after a moment—"so it's no good asking me." Then suddenly, she hesitated—"or—at least—"

"At least what? Please go on."

Fanny wriggled again, then said, with a burst:

"Well, my mother was Aunt Sparling's younger sister—you know that—don't you?—"

"Of course."

"And our grandfather died a year before Aunt Sparling. She was mother's trustee. Oh, the money's all right—the trust money, I mean," said the girl, hastily. "But it was a lot of other things—that mother says grandpapa always meant to divide between her and Aunt Sparling—and she never had them—nor a farthing out of them!"

"What other things? I don't understand."

"Jewels!—there!—jewels—and a lot of plate. Mother says she had a right to half the things that belonged to her mother. Grandpapa always told her she should have them. And there wasn't a word about them in the will."

"I haven't any diamonds," said Diana, quietly, "or any jewels at all, except a string of pearls papa gave me when I was nineteen, and two or three little things we bought in Florence."

Fanny Merton grew still redder; she stared aggressively at her cousin:

"Well—that was because—Aunt Sparling sold all the things!"

Diana started and recoiled.

"You mean," she said—her breath fluttering—"that—mamma sold things she had no right to—and never gave Aunt Bertha the money!"

The restrained passion of her look had an odd effect upon her companion. Fanny first wavered under it, then laughed—a laugh that was partly perplexity, partly something else, indecipherable.

"Well, as I wasn't born then, I don't know. You needn't be cross with me, Diana; I didn't mean to say any harm of anybody. But—mother says"—she laid an obstinate stress on each word—"that she remembers quite well—grandpapa meant her to have: a diamond necklace; a riviere" (she began to check the items off on her fingers)—"there were two, and of course Aunt Sparling had the best; two bracelets, one with turquoises and one with pearls; a diamond brooch; an opal pendant; a little watch set with diamonds grandma used to wear; and then a lot of plate! Mother wrote me out a list—I've got it here."

She opened a beaded bag on her wrist, took out half a sheet of paper, and handed it to Diana.

Diana looked at it in silence. Even her lips were white, and her fingers shook.

"Did you ever send this to papa?" she asked, after a minute.

Fanny fidgeted again.

"Yes."

"And what did he say? Have you got his letter?"

"No; I haven't got his letter."

"Did he admit that—that mamma had done this?"

Fanny hesitated: but her intelligence, which was of a simple kind, did not suggest to her an ingenious line of reply.

"Well, I dare say he didn't. But that doesn't make any difference."

"Was that what he and Uncle Merton quarrelled about?"

Fanny hesitated again; then broke out: "Father only did what he ought—he asked for what was owed mother!"

"And papa wouldn't give it!" cried Diana, in a strange note of scorn; "papa, who never could rest if he owed a farthing to anybody—who always overpaid everybody—whom everybody—"



She rose suddenly with a bitten lip. Her eyes blazed—and her cheeks. She walked to the window and stood looking out, in a whirlwind of feeling and memory, hiding her face as best she could from the girl who sat watching her with an expression half sulky, half insolent. Diana was thinking of moments—recalling forgotten fragments of dialogue—in the past, which showed her father's opinion of his Barbadoes brother-in-law: "A grasping, ill-bred fellow"—"neither gratitude, nor delicacy"—"has been the evil genius of his wife, and will be the ruin of his children." She did not believe a word of Fanny's story—not a word of it!

She turned impetuously. Then, as her eyes met Fanny's, a shock ran through her—the same sudden, inexplicable fear which had seized on Mrs. Colwood, only more sickening, more paralyzing. And it was a fear which ran back to and linked itself with the hour of heart-searching in the wood. What was Fanny thinking of?—what was in her mind—on her lips? Impulses she could not have defined, terrors to which she could give no name, crept over Diana's will and disabled it. She trembled from head to foot—and gave way.

She walked up to her cousin.

"Fanny, is there any letter—anything of grandpapa's—or of my mother's—that you could show me?"

"No! It was a promise, I tell you—there was no writing. But my mother could swear to it."

The girl faced her cousin without flinching. Diana sat down again, white and tremulous, the moment of energy, of resistance, gone. In a wavering voice she began to explain that she had, in fact, been inquiring into her affairs, that the money was not actually at her disposal, that to provide it would require an arrangement with her bankers, and the depositing of some securities; but that, before long, it should be available.

Fanny drew a long breath. She had not expected the surrender. Her eyes sparkled, and she began to stammer thanks.

"Don't!" said Diana, putting out a hand. "If I owe it you—and I take it on your word—the money shall be paid—that's all. Only—only, I wish you had not written to me like that; and I ask that—that—you will never, please, speak to me about it again!"

She had risen, and was standing, very tall and rigid, her hands pressing against each other.

Fanny's face clouded.

"Very well," she said, as she rose from her seat, "I'm sure I don't want to talk about it. I didn't like the job a bit—nor did mother. But if you are poor—and somebody owes you something—you can't help trying to get it—that's all!"

Diana said nothing. She went to the writing-table and began to arrange some letters. Fanny looked at her.

"I say, Diana!—perhaps you won't want me to stay here after—You seem to have taken against me."

Diana turned.

"No," she said, faintly. Then, with a little sob: "I thought of nothing but your coming."

Fanny flushed.

"Well, of course you've been very kind to me—and all that sort of thing. I wasn't saying you hadn't been. Except—Well, no, there's one thing I do think you've been rather nasty about!"

The girl threw back her head defiantly.

Diana's pale face questioned her.

"I was talking to your maid yesterday," said Fanny, slowly, "and she says you're going to stay at some smart place next week, and you've been getting a new dress for it. And you've never said a word to me about it—let alone ask me to go with you!"

Diana looked at her amazed.

"You mean—I'm going to Tallyn!"

"That's it," said Fanny, reproachfully. "And you know I don't get a lot of fun at home—and I might as well be seeing people—and going about with you—though I do have to play second fiddle. You're rich, of course—everybody's nice to you—"

She paused. Diana, struck dumb, could find, for the moment, nothing to say. The red named in Fanny's cheeks, and she turned away with a flounce.

"Oh, well, you'd better say it at once—you're ashamed of me! I haven't had your blessed advantages! Do you think I don't know that!"

In the girl's heightened voice and frowning brow there was a touch of fury, of goaded pride, that touched Diana with a sudden remorse. She ran toward her cousin—appealing:

"I'm very sorry, Fanny. I—I don't like to leave you—but they are my great friends—and Lady Lucy, though she's very kind, is very old-fashioned. One couldn't take the smallest liberty with her. I don't think I could ask to take you—when they are quite by themselves—and the house is only half mounted. But Mrs. Colwood and I had been thinking of several things that might amuse you—and I shall only be two nights away."

"I don't want any amusing—thanks!" said Fanny, walking to the door.

She closed it behind her. Diana clasped her hands overhead in a gesture of amazement.

"To quarrel with me about that—after—the other thing!"

No!—not Tallyn!—not Tallyn!—anywhere, anything, but that!

Was she proud?—snobbish? Her eyes filled with tears, but her will hardened. What was to be gained? Fanny would not like them, nor they her.

* * * * *

The luncheon-party had been arranged for Mr. Birch, Fanny's train acquaintance. Diana had asked the Roughsedges, explaining the matter, with a half-deprecating, half-humorous face, to the comfortable ear of Mrs. Roughsedge. Explanation was necessary, for this particular young man was only welcome in those houses of the neighborhood which were not socially dainty. Mrs. Roughsedge understood at once—laughed heartily—accepted with equal heartiness—and then, taking Diana's hand, she said, with a shining of her gray eye:

"My dear, if you want Henry and me to stand on our heads we will attempt it with pleasure. You are an angel!—and angels are not to be worried by solicitors."

The first part of which remark referred to a certain morning after Hugh's announcement of his appointment to the Nigerian expedition, when Diana had shown the old people a sweet and daughter-like sympathy, which had entirely won whatever portion of their hearts remained still to be captured.

Hugh, meanwhile, was not yet gone, though he was within a fortnight of departure. He was coming to luncheon, with his parents, in order to support Diana. The family had seen Miss Merton some two or three times, and were all strongly of opinion that Diana very much wanted supporting. "Why should one be civil to one's cousin?" Dr. Roughsedge inquired of his wife. "If they are nice, let them stand on their own merits. If not, they are disagreeable people who know a deal too much about you. Miss Diana should have consulted me!"

The Roughsedges arrived early, and found Diana alone in the drawing-room. Again Captain Roughsedge thought her pale, and was even sure that she had lost flesh. This time it was hardly possible to put these symptoms down to Marsham's account. He chafed under the thought that he should be no longer there in case a league, offensive and defensive, had in the end to be made with Mrs. Colwood for the handling of cousins. It was quite clear that Miss Fanny was a vulgar little minx, and that Beechcote would have no peace till it was rid of her. Meanwhile, the indefinable change which had come over his mother's face, during the preceding week, had escaped even the quick eyes of an affectionate son. Alas! for mothers—when Lalage appears!

Mr. Birch arrived to the minute, and when he was engaged in affable conversation with Diana, Fanny, last of the party—the door being ceremoniously thrown open by the butler—entered, with an air. Mr. Birch sprang effusively to his feet, and there was a noisy greeting between him and his travelling companion. The young man was slim, and effeminately good-looking. His frock-coat and gray trousers were new and immaculate; his small feet were encased in shining patent-leather boots, and his blue eyes gave the impression of having been carefully matched with his tie. He was evidently delighted to find himself at Beechcote, and it might have been divined that there was a spice of malice in his pleasure. The Vavasours had always snubbed him; Miss Mallory herself had not been over-polite to him on one or two occasions; but her cousin was a "stunner," and, secure in Fanny's exuberant favor, he made himself quite at home. Placed on Diana's left at table, he gave her much voluble information about her neighbors, mostly ill-natured; he spoke familiarly of "that clever chap Marsham," as of a politician who owed his election for the division entirely to the good offices of Mr. Fred Birch's firm, and described Lady Lucy as "an old dear," though very "frowsty" in her ideas. He was strongly of opinion that Marsham should find an heiress as soon as possible, for there was no saying how "long the old lady would see him out of his money," and everybody knew that at present "she kept him beastly short." "As for me," the speaker wound up, with an engaging and pensive naivete, "I've talked to him till I'm tired."

At last he was headed away from Tallyn and its owners, only to fall into a rapturous debate with Fanny over a racing bet which seemed to have been offered and taken on the journey which first made them acquainted. Fanny had lost, but the young man gallantly excused her.

"No—no, couldn't think of it! Not till next time. Then—my word!—I'll come down upon you—won't I? Teach you to know your way about—eh?"

Loud laughter from Fanny, who professed to know her way about already. They exchanged "tips"—until at last Mr. Birch, lost in admiration of his companion, pronounced her a "ripper"—he had never yet met a lady so well up—"why, you know as much as a man!"

Dr. Roughsedge meanwhile observed the type. The father, an old-fashioned steady-going solicitor, had sent the son to expensive schools, and allowed him two years at Oxford, until the College had politely requested the youth's withdrawal. The business was long established, and had been sound. This young man had now been a partner in it for two years, and the same period had seen the rise to eminence of another and hitherto obscure firm in the county town. Mr. Fred Birch spoke contemptuously of the rival firm as "smugs"; but the district was beginning to intrust its wills and mortgages to the "smugs" with a sad and increasing alacrity.

There were, indeed, some secret discomforts in the young man's soul; and while he sported with Fanny he did not forget business. The tenant of Beechcote was, ipso facto, of some social importance, and Diana was reported to be rich; the Roughsedges also, though negligible financially, were not without influence in high places; and the doctor was governor of an important grammar-school recently revived and reorganized, wherewith the Birches would have been glad to be officially connected. He therefore made himself agreeable.