"You will see a report of my speech in the debate to-morrow. It certainly made an impression, and I must manage, if I can, to stick to Parliament. But we will consult when we meet.

"Your most loving OLIVER."

As he wrote it Marsham had been uncomfortably conscious of another self beside him—mocking, or critical.

"I don't regret it for myself." Pshaw! What was there to choose between him and his mother? There, on his writing-table, lay a number of recent bills, and some correspondence as to a Scotch moor he had persuaded his mother to take for the coming season. There was now to be an end, he supposed, to the expenditure which the bills represented, and an end to expensive moors. "I don't regret it for myself." Damned humbug! When did any man, brought up in wealth, make the cold descent to poverty and self-denial without caring? Yet he let the sentence stand. He was too sleepy, too inert, to rewrite it.

And how cold were all his references to the catastrophe! He groaned as he thought of Diana—as though he actually saw the vulture gnawing at the tender breast. Had she slept?—had the tears stopped? Let him tear up the beastly thing, and begin again!

No. His head fell forward on his arm. Some dull weight of character—of disillusion—interposed. He could do no better. He shut, stamped, and posted what he had written.

* * * * *

At mid-day, in her Brookshire village, Diana received the letter—with another from London, in a handwriting she did not know.

When she had read Marsham's it dropped from her hand. The color flooded her cheeks—as though the heart leaped beneath a fresh blow which it could not realize or measure. Was it so she would have written to Oliver if—

She was sitting at her writing-table in the drawing-room. Her eyes wandered through the mullioned window beside her to the hill-side and the woods. This was Wednesday. Four days since, among those trees, Oliver had spoken to her. During those four days it seemed to her that, in the old Hebrew phrase, she had gone down into the pit. All the nameless dreads and terrors of her youth, all the intensified fears of the last few weeks, had in a few minutes become real and verified—only in a shape infinitely more terrible than any fear among them all had ever dared to prophesy. The story of her mother—the more she knew of it, the more she realized it, the more sharply it bit into the tissues of life; the more it seemed to set Juliet Sparling and Juliet Sparling's child alone by themselves—in a dark world. Diana had never yet had the courage to venture out-of-doors since the news came to her; she feared to see even her old friends the Roughsedges, and had been invisible to them since the Saturday; she feared even the faces of the village children.

All through she seemed to have been clinging to Marsham's supporting hand as to the clew which might—when nature had had its way—lead her back out of this labyrinth of pain. But surely he would let her sorrow awhile!—would sorrow with her. Under the strange coldness and brevity of his letter, she felt like the children in the market-place of old—"We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."

Yet if her story was not to be a source of sorrow—of divine pity—it could only be a source of disgrace and shame. Tears might wash it out! But to hate and resent it—so it seemed to her—must be—in a world, where every detail of such a thing was or would be known—to go through life branded and crushed by it. If the man who was to be her husband could only face it thus (by a stern ostracism of the dead, by silencing all mention of them between himself and her), her cheeks could never cease to burn, her heart to shrink.

Now at last she felt herself weighed indeed to the earth, because Marsham, in that measured letter, had made her realize the load on him.

All that huge wealth he was to give up for her? His mother had actually the power to strip him of his inheritance?—and would certainly exercise it to punish him for marrying her—Diana?

Humiliation came upon her like a flood, and a bitter insight followed. Between the lines of the letter she read the reluctance, the regrets of the man who had written it. She saw that he would be faithful to her if he could, but that in her own concentration of love she had accepted what Oliver had not in truth the strength to give her. The Marsham she loved had suddenly disappeared, and in his place was a Marsham whom she might—at a personal cost he would never forget, and might never forgive—persuade or compel to marry her.

She sprang up. For the first time since the blow had fallen, vigor had returned to her movements and life to her eyes.

"Ah, no!" she said to herself, panting a little. "No!"

A letter fell to the ground—the letter in the unknown handwriting. Some premonition made her open it and prepared her for the signature.

"MY DEAR MISS MALLORY,—I heard of the sad discovery which had taken place, from my cousin, Miss Drake, on Sunday morning, and came up at once from the country to be with my mother; for I know well with what sympathy she had been following Oliver's wishes and desires. It is a very painful business. I do most truly regret the perplexing situation in which you find yourself, and I am sure you will not resent it if, as Oliver's sister, I write you my views on the matter.

"I am afraid it is useless to expect that my mother should give way. And, then, the question is, What is the right course for you and Oliver to pursue? I understand that he proposed to you, and you accepted him, in ignorance of the melancholy truth. And, like a man of honor, he proposes to stand by his engagement—unless, of course, you release him.

"Now, if I were in your place, I should expect to consider such a matter not as affecting myself only, but in its relation to society—and the community. Our first duty is to Society. We owe it everything, and we must not act selfishly toward it. Consider Oliver's position. He has his foot on the political ladder. Every session his influence in Parliament increases. His speech to-night was—as I hear from a man who has just come from the debate—the most brilliant he has yet made. It is extremely likely that when our party comes in again he will have office, and in ten or fifteen years' time what is there to prevent his being even Prime Minister?—with all the mighty influence over millions of human beings which that means?

"But to give him every chance in his career money is, unfortunately, indispensable. Every English Prime Minister has been a rich man. It may be a blot on our English life. I think it is. But, then, I have been all my life on the side of the poor. You, who are a Tory and an Imperialist, who sympathize with militarism and with war, will agree that it is important our politicians should be among the 'Haves,' that a man's possessions do matter to his party and his cause.

"They matter especially—at the present moment—to our party and our cause. We are the poor party, and our rich men are few and far between.

"You may say that you would help him, and that your own money would be at his disposal. But could a man live upon his wife, in such circumstances, with any self-respect? Of course, I know that you are very young, and I trust that your views on many subjects, social and political, will change, and change materially, before long. It is a serious thing for women nowadays to throw themselves across the path of progress. At the same time I see that you have a strong—if I may say so—a vehement character. It may not be easy for you to cast off at once what, I understand, has been your father's influence. And meanwhile Oliver would be fighting all your father's and your ideas—largely on your money; for he has only a thousand a year of his own.

"Please let me assure you that I am not influenced by my mother's views. She attaches importance—an exaggerated—if she were not my mother, I should say an absurd—importance, to the family. Whereas, ideas—the great possibilities of the future—when free men and women shall lead a free and noble life—these are what influence me—these are what I live for.

"It will cause you both pain to separate. I know that. But summon a rational will to your aid, and you will soon see that passion is a poor thing compared to impersonal and unselfish aims. The cause of women—their political and social enfranchisement—the freeing of men from the curse of militarism—of both men and women from the patriotic lies which make us bullies and cowards—it is to these I would invite you—when you have overcome a mere personal grief.

"I fear I shall seem to you a voice crying in the wilderness; but I write in Oliver's interest—and your own.

"Yours sincerely,

"ISABEL FOTHERINGHAM.

"P.S. Our secretary, Mrs. Derrick Smith, at the Mary Wollstonecraft Club, will always be glad to send you any literature you might require."

Diana read to the end. She put it down with something like a smile. As she paced the room, her head thrown back, her hands behind her, the weight had been lifted from her; she breathed from a freer breast.

Very soon she went back to her desk and began to write.

"My dear Oliver,—I did not realize how things were when you came yesterday. Now I see. You must not marry me. I could not bear to bring poverty upon you, and—to-day—I do not feel that I have the strength to meet your mother's and your sister's opposition.

"Will you please tell Lady Lucy and Mrs. Fotheringham that I have received their letters? It will not be necessary to answer them. You will tell them that I have broken off the engagement.

"You were very good to me yesterday. I thank you with all my heart. But it is not in my power—yet—to forget it all. My mother was so young—and it seems but the other day.

"I would not injure your career for the world. I hope that all good will come to you—always.

"Probably Mrs. Colwood and I shall go abroad for a little while. I want to be alone—and it will be easiest so. Indeed, if possible, we shall leave London to-morrow night. Good-bye.

"DIANA."

She rose, and stood looking down upon the letter. A thought struck her. Would he take the sentence giving the probable time of her departure as an invitation to him to come and meet her at the station?—as showing a hope that he might yet persist—and prevail?

She stooped impetuously to rewrite the letter. Instead, her tears fell on it. Sobbing, she put it up—she pressed it to her lips. If he did come—might they not press hands?—look into each other's eyes?—just once, once more?

* * * * *

An hour later the home was in a bustle of packing and housekeeping arrangements. Muriel Colwood, with a small set face and lips, and eyes that would this time have scorned to cry, was writing notes and giving directions. Meanwhile, Diana had written to Mrs. Roughsedge, and, instead of answering the letter, the recipient appeared in person, breathless with the haste she had made, the gray curls displaced.

Diana told her story, her slender fingers quivering in the large motherly hand whose grasp soothed her, her eyes avoiding the tender dismay and pity writ large on the old face beside her; and at the end she said, with an effort:

"Perhaps you have all expected me to be engaged to Mr. Marsham. He did propose to me—but—I have refused him."

She faltered a little as she told her first falsehood, but she told it.

"My dear!" cried Mrs. Roughsedge, "he can't—he won't—accept that! If he ever cared for you, he will care for you tenfold more now!"

"It was I," said Diana, hurriedly—"I have done it. And, please, I would rather it were now all forgotten. Nobody else need know, need they, that he proposed?"

She stroked her friend's hand piteously. Mrs. Roughsedge, foreseeing the storm of gossip that would be sweeping in a day or two through the village and the neighborhood, could not command herself to speak. Her questions—her indignation—choked her. At the end of the conversation, when Diana had described such plans as she had, and the elder lady rose to go, she said, faltering:

"May Hugh come and say good-bye?"

Diana shrank a moment, and then assented. Mrs. Roughsedge folded the girl to her heart, and fairly broke down. Diana comforted her; but it seemed as if her own tears were now dry. When they were parting, she called her friend back a moment.

"I think," she said, steadily, "it would be best now that everybody here should know what my name was, and who I am. Will you tell the Vicar, and anybody else you think of? I shall come back to live here. I know everybody will be kind—" Her voice died away.

The March sun had set and the lamps were lit when Hugh Roughsedge entered the drawing-room where Diana sat writing letters, paying bills, absorbing herself in all the details of departure. The meeting between them was short. Diana was embarrassed, above all, by the tumult of suppressed feeling she divined in Roughsedge. For the first time she must perforce recognize what hitherto she had preferred not to see: what now she was determined not to know. The young soldier, on his side, was stifled by his own emotions—wrath—contempt—pity; and by a maddening desire to wrap this pale stricken creature in his arms, and so protect her from an abominable world. But something told him—to his despair—that she had been in Marsham's arms; had given her heart irrevocably; and that, Marsham's wife or no, all was done and over for him, Hugh Roughsedge.

Yet surely in time—in time! That was the inner clamor of the mind, as he bid her good-bye, after twenty minutes' disjointed talk, in which, finally, neither dared to go beyond commonplace. Only at the last, as he held her hand, he asked her:

"I may write to you from Nigeria?"

Rather shyly, she assented; adding, with a smile:

"But I am a bad letter-writer!"

"You are an angel!" he said, hoarsely, lifted her hand, kissed it, and rushed away.

She was shaken by the scene, and had hardly composed herself again to a weary grappling with business when the front door bell rang once more, and the butler appeared.

"Mr. Lavery wishes to know, miss, if you will see him."

The Vicar! Diana's heart sank. Must she? But some deep instinct—some yearning—interfered, and she bade him be admitted.

Then she stood waiting, dreading some onslaught on the secrets of her mind and heart—some presumption in the name of religion.

The tall form entered, in the close-buttoned coat, the gaunt oblong of the face poked forward, between the large protruding ears, the spectacled eyes blinking.

"May I come in? I will only keep you a few minutes."

She came forward and gave him her hand. The door shut behind him.

"Won't you sit down?"

"I think not. You must be very busy. I only came to say a few words. Miss Mallory!"

He still held her hand. Diana trembled, and looked up.

"—I fear you may have thought me harsh. I blame myself in many respects. Will you forgive me? Mrs. Roughsedge has told me what you wished her to tell me. Before you go, will you still let me give you Christ's message?"

The tears rushed back to Diana's eyes; she looked at him silently.

"'Blessed are they that mourn,'" he said, gently, with a tender dignity, "'for they shall be comforted!'"

Their eyes met. From the man's face and manner everything had dropped but the passion of Christian charity, mingled with a touch of remorse—as though, in what had been revealed to him, the servant had realized some mysterious rebuke of his Lord.

"Remember that!" he went on. "Your mourning is your blessing. God's love will come to you through it—and the sense of fellowship with Christ. Don't cast it from you—don't put it away."

"I know," she said, brokenly. "It is agony, but it is sacred."

His eyes grew dim. She withdrew her hand, and they talked a little about her journey.

"But you will come back," he said to her, presently, with earnestness; "your friends here will think it an honor and a privilege to welcome you."

"Oh yes, I shall come back. Unless—I have some friends in London—East London. Perhaps I might work there."

He shook his head.

"No, you are not strong enough. Come back here. There is God's work to be done in this village, Miss Mallory. Come and put your hand to it. But not yet—not yet."

Then her weariness told him that he had said enough, and he went.

* * * * *

Late that night Diana tore herself from Muriel Colwood, went alone to her room, and locked her door. Then she drew back the curtains, and gazed once more on the same line of hills she had seen rise out of the wintry mists on Christmas morning. The moon was still behind the down, and a few stars showed among the clouds.

She turned away, unlocked a drawer, and, falling upon her knees by the bed, she spread out before her the fragile and time-stained paper that held her mother's last words to her.

"MY LITTLE DIANA—my precious child,—It may be—it will be—years before this reaches you. I have made your father promise to let you grow up without any knowledge or reminder of me. It was difficult, but at last—he promised. Yet there must come a time when it will hurt you to think of your mother. When it does—listen, my darling. Your father knows that I loved him always! He knows—and he has forgiven. He knows too what I did—and how—so does Sir James. There is no place, no pardon for me on earth—but you may still love me, Diana—still love me—and pray for me. Oh, my little one!—they brought you in to kiss me a little while ago—and you looked at me with your blue deep eyes—and then you kissed me—so softly—a little strangely—with your cool lips—and now I have made the nurse lift me up that I may write. A few days—perhaps even a few hours—will bring me rest. I long for it. And yet it is sweet to be with your father, and to hear your little feet on the stairs. But most sweet, perhaps, because it must end so soon. Death makes these days possible, and for that I bless and welcome death. I seem to be slipping away on the great stream—so gently—tired—only your father's hand. Good-bye—my precious Diana—your dying—and very weary

"MOTHER."

The words sank into Diana's young heart. They dulled the smart of her crushed love; they awakened a sense of those forces ineffable and majestic, terrible and yet "to be entreated," which hold and stamp the human life. Oliver had forsaken her. His kiss was still on her lips. Yet he had forsaken her. She must stand alone. Only—in the spirit—she put out clinging hands; she drew her mother to her breast; she smiled into her father's eyes. One with them; and so one with all who suffer! She offered her life to those great Forces; to the hidden Will. And thus, after three days of torture, agony passed into a trance of ecstasy—of aspiration.

* * * * *

But these were the exaltations of night and silence. With the returning day, Diana was again the mere girl, struggling with misery and nervous shock. In the middle of the morning arrived a special messenger with a letter from Marsham. It contained arguments and protestations which in the living mouth might have had some power. That the living mouth was not there to make them was a fact more eloquent than any letter. For the first time Diana was conscious of impatience, of a natural indignation. She merely asked the messenger to say that "there was no answer."

Yet, as they crossed London her heart fluttered within her. One moment her eyes were at the window scanning the bustle of the streets; the next she would force herself to talk and smile with Muriel Colwood.

Mrs. Colwood insisted on dinner at the Charing Cross Hotel. Diana submitted. Afterward they made their way, along the departure platform, to the Dover-Calais train. They took their seats. Muriel Colwood knew—felt it indeed, through every nerve—that the girl with her was still watching, still hoping, still straining each bodily perception in a listening expectancy.

The train was very full, and the platform crowded with friends, luggage, and officials. Upon the tumult the great electric lamps threw their cold ugly light. The roar and whistling of the trains filled the vast station. Diana, meanwhile, sat motionless in her corner, looking out, one hand propping her face.

But no one came. The signal was given for departure. The train glided out. Diana's head slipped back and her eyes closed. Muriel, stifling her tears, dared not approach her.

* * * * *

Northward and eastward from Dover Harbor, sweep beyond sweep, rose the white cliffs that are to the arriving and departing Englishman the symbols of his country.

Diana, on deck, wrapped in veil and cloak, watched them disappear, in mists already touched by the moonrise. Six months before she had seen them for the first time, had fed her eyes upon the "dear, dear land," as cliffs and fields and houses flashed upon the sight, yearning toward it with the passion of a daughter and an exile.

In those six months she had lived out the first chapter of her youth. She stood between two shores of life, like the vessel from which she gazed; vanishing lights and shapes behind her; darkness in front.

"Where lies the land to which the ship must go? Far, far ahead is all the seamen know!"



Part III

"Love's eye is not so true as all men's: no, How can it? O how can Love's eye be true That is so vexed with watching and with tears?"



CHAPTER XV

London was in full season. But it was a cold May, and both the town and its inhabitants wore a gray and pinched aspect. Under the east wind an unsavory dust blew along Piccadilly; the ladies were still in furs; the trees were venturing out reluctantly, showing many a young leaf bitten by night frosts; the Park had but a scanty crowd; and the drapers, oppressed with summer goods, saw their muslins and gauzes in the windows give up their freshness for naught.

Nevertheless, the ferment of political and social life had seldom been greater. A Royal wedding in the near future was supposed to account for the vigor of London's social pulse; the streets, indeed, were already putting up poles and decorations. And a general election, expected in the autumn, if not before, accounted for the vivacity of the clubs, the heat of the newspapers, and the energy of the House of Commons, where all-night sittings were lightly risked by the Government and recklessly challenged by the Opposition. Everybody was playing to the gallery—i.e., the country. Old members were wooing their constituencies afresh; young candidates were spending feverish energies on new hazards, and anxiously inquiring at what particular date in the campaign tea-parties became unlawful. Great issues were at stake; for old parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests and passions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was at its crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and safe ripening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxiety as to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strong and heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals were at odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was sending its fiery cross through the towns and the industrial districts of the north.

A debate of some importance was going on in the House of Commons. The Tory Government had brought in a Land Bill, intended, no doubt, rather as bait for electors than practical politics. It was timid and ill-drafted, and the Opposition, in days when there were still some chances in debate, joyously meant to kill it, either by frontal attack or by obstruction. But, in the opinion of the Left Wing of the party, the chief weapon of its killing should be the promise of a much larger and more revolutionary measure from the Liberal side. The powerful Right Wing, however, largely represented on the front bench, held that you could no more make farmers than saints by Act of Parliament, and that only by slow and indirect methods could the people be drawn back to the land. There was, in fact, little difference between them and the front bench opposite, except a difference in method; only the Whig brains were the keener; and in John Ferrier the Right Wing had a personality and an oratorical gift which the whole Tory party admired and envied.

There had been a party meeting on the subject of the Bill, and Ferrier and the front bench had, on the whole, carried the indorsement of their policy. But there was an active and discontented minority, full of rebellious projects for the general election.

On this particular afternoon Ferrier had been dealing with the Government Bill on the lines laid down by the meeting at Grenville House. His large pale face (the face of a student rather than a politician), with its small eyes and overhanging brows; the straight hair and massive head; the heavy figure closely buttoned in the familiar frock-coat; the gesture easy, animated, still young—on these well-known aspects a crowded House had bent its undivided attention. Then Ferrier sat down; a bore rose; and out flowed the escaping tide to the lobbies and the Terrace.

Marsham found himself on the Terrace, among a group of malcontents: Barton, grim and unkempt, prophet-eyes blazing, mouth contemptuous; the Scotchman McEwart, who had been one of the New Year's visitors to Tallyn, tall, wiry, red-haired, the embodiment of all things shrewd and efficient; and two or three more. A young London member was holding forth, masking what was really a passion of disgust in a slangy nonchalance.

"What's the good of turning these fellows out—will anybody tell me?—if that's all Ferrier can do for us? Think I prefer 'em to that kind of mush! As for Barton, I've had to hold him down by the coat-tails!"

Barton allowed the slightest glint of a smile to show itself for an instant. The speaker—Roland Lankester—was one of his few weaknesses. But the frown returned. He strolled along with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground; his silence was the silence of one in whom the fire was hot.

"Most disappointing—all through!" said McEwart, with emphasis. "The facts wrongly chosen—the argument absurd. It'll take all the heart out of our fellows in the country."

Marsham looked up.

"Well, it isn't for want of pressure. Ferrier's life hasn't been worth living this last month."

The tone was ambiguous. It fitted either with defence or indictment.

The London member—Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent, and of Frobisher, represented an East End constituency, and lived there—looked at the speaker with a laugh. "That's perfectly true. What have we all been doing but 'gingering' Ferrier for the last six months? And here's the result! No earthly good in wearing one's self to fiddle-strings over this election! I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!"

The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animated crowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they passed Ferrier himself—flushed—with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless, smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blew chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who were being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.

"He'll have to go to the Lords!—that's flat—if we win this election. If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if we don't—well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else."

The remarks were McEwart's. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.

"Don't you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier's one of the smartest Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out"

At this Barton roused.

"What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run straight!—as the party wants him to run."

"All right. Ad leones! Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I don't know what Marsham will say to it."

Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect: broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty and the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and conditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made him friends in all camps. Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him; perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly. Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic, even a hard fanatic, on occasion.

Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself. As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head, and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton, the middle-class alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity of Lankester. But the face was fretful and worried.

"Ferrier has not the smallest intention of going to the Lords!" he said, at last—not without a touch of impatience.

"That's the party's affair."

"The party owes him a deal too much to insist upon anything against his will."

"Does it!—does it!" said Lankester. "Ferrier always reminds me of a cat we possessed at home, who brought forth many kittens. She loved them dearly, and licked them all over—tenderly—all day. But by the end of the second day they were always dead. Somehow she had killed them all. That's what Ferrier does with all our little Radical measures—loves 'em all—and kills 'em all."

McEwart flushed.

"Well, it's no good talking," he said, doggedly; "we've done enough of that! There will be a meeting of the Forward Club next week, and we shall decide on our line of action."

"Broadstone will never throw him over." Lankester threw another glance at Marsham. "You'll only waste your breath."

Lord Broadstone was the veteran leader of the party, who in the event of victory at the polls would undoubtedly be Prime Minister.

"He can take Foreign Affairs, and go to the Lords in a blaze of glory," said McEwart. "But he's impossible!—as leader in the Commons. The party wants grit—not dialectic."

Marsham still said nothing. The others fell to discussing the situation in much detail, gradually elaborating what were, in truth, the first outlines of a serious campaign against Ferrier's leadership. Marsham listened, but took no active part in it. It was plain, however, that none of the group felt himself in any way checked by Marsham's presence or silence.

Presently Marsham—the debate in the House having fallen to levels of dulness "measureless to man"—remembered that his mother had expressed a wish that he might come home to dinner. He left the House, lengthening his walk for exercise, by way of Whitehall and Piccadilly. His expression was still worried and preoccupied. Mechanically he stopped to look into a picture-dealer's shop, still open, somewhere about the middle of Piccadilly. A picture he saw there made him start. It was a drawing of the chestnut woods of Vallombrosa, in the first flush and glitter of spring, with a corner of one of the monastic buildings, now used as a hotel.

She was there. At an official crush the night before he had heard Chide say to Lady Niton that Miss Mallory had written to him from Vallombrosa, and was hoping to stay there till the end of June. So that she was sitting, walking, reading, among those woods. In what mood?—with what courage? In any case, she was alone; fighting her grief alone; looking forward to the future alone. Except, of course, for Mrs. Colwood—nice, devoted little thing!

He moved on, consumed with regrets and discomfort. During the two months which had elapsed since Diana had left England, he had, in his own opinion, gone through a good deal. He was pursued by the memory of that wretched afternoon when he had debated with himself whether he should not, after all, go and intercept her at Charing Cross, plead his mother's age and frail health, implore her to give him time; not to break off all relations; to revert, at least, to the old friendship. He had actually risen from his seat in the House of Commons half an hour before the starting of the train; had made his way to the Central Lobby, torn by indecision; and had there been pounced upon by an important and fussy constituent. Of course, he could have shaken the man off. But just the extra resolution required to do it had seemed absolutely beyond his power, and when next he looked at the clock it was too late. He went back to the House, haunted by the imagination of a face. She would never have mentioned her route unless she had meant "Come and say good-bye!"—unless she had longed for a parting look and word. And he—coward that he was—had shirked it—had denied her last mute petition.

Well!—after all—might it not simply have made matters worse?—for her no less than for him? The whole thing was his mother's responsibility. He might, no doubt, have pushed it all through, regardless of consequences; he might have accepted the Juliet Sparling heritage, thrown over his career, braved his mother, and carried off Diana by storm—if, that is, she would ever have allowed him to make the sacrifice as soon as she fully understood it. But it would have been one of the most quixotic things ever done. He had made his effort to do it; and—frankly—he had not been capable of it. He wondered how many men of his acquaintance would have been capable of it.

Nevertheless, he had fallen seriously in his own estimation. Nor was he unaware that he had lost a certain amount of consideration with the world at large. His courtship of Diana had been watched by a great many people: and at the same moment that it came to an end and she left England, the story of her parentage had become known in Brookshire. There had been a remarkable outburst of public sympathy and pity, testifying, no doubt, in a striking way, to the effect produced by the girl's personality, even in those few months of residence. And the fact that she was not there, that only the empty house that she had furnished with so much girlish pleasure remained to bear its mute testimony to her grief, made feeling all the hotter. Brookshire beheld her as a charming and innocent victim, and, not being able to tell her so, found relief in blaming and mocking at the man who had not stood by her. For it appeared there was to be no engagement, although all Brookshire had expected it. Instead of it, came the announcement of the tragic truth, the girl's hurried departure, and the passionate feeling on her behalf of people like the Roughsedges, or her quondam critic, the Vicar.

Marsham, thereupon, had become conscious of a wind of unpopularity blowing through his constituency. Some of the nice women of the neighborhood, with whom he had been always hitherto a welcome and desired guest, had begun to neglect him; men who would never have dreamed of allowing their own sons to marry a girl in Diana's position, greeted him with a shade less consideration than usual; and the Liberal agent in the division had suddenly ceased to clamor for his attendance and speeches at rural meetings. There could be no question that by some means or other the story had got abroad—no doubt in a most inaccurate and unjust form—and was doing harm.

Reflections of this kind were passing through his mind as he crossed Hyde Park Corner on his way to Eaton Square. Opposite St. George's Hospital he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other side of the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening his pace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him a perfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, into which he jumped, and was carried promptly out of sight.

Marsham was conscious of a sudden heat in the face. He had never yet been so sharply reminded of a changed relation. After Diana's departure he had himself written to Chide, defending his own share in the matter, speaking bitterly of the action taken by his mother and sister, and lamenting that Diana had not been willing to adopt the waiting and temporizing policy, which alone offered any hope of subduing his mother's opposition. Marsham declared—persuading himself, as he wrote, of the complete truth of the statement—that he had been quite willing to relinquish his father's inheritance for Diana's sake, and that it was her own action alone that had separated them. Sir James had rather coldly acknowledged the letter, with the remark that few words were best on a subject so painful; and since then there had been no intimacy between the two men. Marsham could only think with discomfort of the scene at Felton Park, when a man of passionate nature and romantic heart had allowed him access to the most sacred and tragic memories of his life. Sir James felt, he supposed, that he had been cheated out of his confidence—cheated out of his sympathy. Well!—it was unjust!

* * * * *

He reached Eaton Square in good time for dinner, and found his mother in the drawing-room.

"You look tired, Oliver," she said, as he kissed her.

"It's the east wind, I suppose—beastly day!"

Lady Lucy surveyed him, as he stood, moody and physically chilled, with his back to the fire.

"Was the debate interesting?"

"Ferrier made a very disappointing speech. All our fellows are getting restive."

Lady Lucy looked astonished.

"Surely they ought to trust his judgment! He has done so splendidly for the party."

Marsham shook his head.

"I wish you would use your influence," he said, slowly. "There is a regular revolt coming on. A large number of men on our side say they won't be led by him; that if we come in, he must go to the Lords."

Lady Lucy started.

"Oliver!" she said, indignantly, "you know it would break his heart!"

And before both minds there rose a vision of Ferrier's future, as he himself certainly conceived it. A triumphant election—the Liberals in office—himself, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Commons—with the reversion of the Premiership whenever old Lord Broadstone should die or retire—this indeed had been Ferrier's working understanding with his party for years; years of strenuous labor, and on the whole of magnificent generalship. Deposition from the leadership of the Commons, with whatever compensations, could only mean to him, and to the world in general, the failure of his career.

"They would give him Foreign Affairs, of course," said Marsham, after a pause.

"Nothing that they could give him would make up!" said Lady Lucy, with energy. "You certainly, Oliver, could not lend yourself to any intrigue of the kind."

Marsham shrugged his shoulders.

"My position is not exactly agreeable! I don't agree with Ferrier, and I do agree with the malcontents. Moreover, when we come in, they will represent the strongest element in the party, with the future in their hands."

Lady Lucy looked at him with sparkling eyes.

"You can't desert him, Oliver!—not you!"

"Perhaps I'd better drop out of Parliament!" he said, impatiently. "The game sometimes doesn't seem worth the candle."

Lady Lucy—alarmed—laid a hand on his.

"Don't say those things, Oliver. You know you have never done so well as this year."

"Yes—up to two months ago."

His mother withdrew her hand. She perfectly understood. Oliver often allowed himself allusions of this kind, and the relations of mother and son were not thereby improved.

Silence reigned for a few minutes. With a hand that shook slightly, Lady Lucy drew toward her a small piece of knitting she had been occupied with when Marsham came in, and resumed it. Meanwhile there flashed through his mind one of those recollections that are only apparently incongruous. He was thinking of a dinner-party which his mother had given the night before; a vast dinner of twenty people; all well-fed, prosperous, moderately distinguished, and, in his opinion, less than moderately amused. The dinner had dragged; the guests had left early; and he had come back to the drawing-room after seeing off the last of them, stifled with yawns. Waste of food, waste of money, waste of time—waste of everything! He had suddenly been seized with a passionate sense of the dulness of his home life; with a wonder how long he could go on submitting to it. And as he recalled these feelings—as of dust in the mouth—there struck across them an image from a dream-world. Diana sat at the head of the long table; Diana in white, with her slender neck, and the blue eyes, with their dear short-sighted look, her smile, and the masses of her dark hair. The dull faces on either side faded away; the lights, the flowers were for her—for her alone!

He roused himself with an effort. His mother was putting up her knitting, which, indeed, she had only pretended to work at.

"We must go and dress, Oliver. Oh! I forgot to tell you—Alicia arrived an hour ago."

"Ah!" He raised his eyebrows indifferently. "I hope she's well?"

"Brilliantly well—and as handsome as ever."

"Any love-affairs?"

"Several, apparently—but nothing suitable," said Lady Lucy, with a smile, as she rose and gathered together her possessions.

"It's time, I think, that Alicia made up her mind. She has been out a good while."

It gave him a curious pleasure—he could hardly tell why—to say this slighting thing of Alicia. After all, he had no evidence that she had done anything unfriendly or malicious at the time of the crisis. Instinctively, he had ranged her then and since as an enemy—as a person who had worked against him. But, in truth, he knew nothing for certain. Perhaps, after the foolish passages between them a year ago, it was natural that she should dislike and be critical of Diana. As to her coming now, it was completely indifferent to him. It would be a good thing, no doubt, for his mother to have her companionship.

As he opened the door for Lady Lucy to leave the room, he noticed her gray and fragile look.

"I believe you have had enough of London, mother. You ought to be getting abroad."

"I am all right," said Lady Lucy, hastily. "Like you, I hate east winds. Oliver, I have had a charming letter from Mr. Heath."

Mr. Heath had been for some months Marsham's local correspondent on the subject of the new Liberal hall in the county town. Lady Lucy had recently sent a check to the Committee, which had set all their building anxieties at rest.

Oliver looked down rather moodily upon her.

"It's pretty easy to write charming letters when people send you money. It would have been more to the purpose, I think, if they had taken a little trouble to raise some themselves!"

Lady Lucy flushed.

"I don't suppose Dunscombe is a place with many rich people in it," she said, in a voice of protest, as she passed him. Her thoughts hurt her as she mounted the stairs. Oliver had not received her gift—for, after all, it was a gift to him—very graciously. And the same might have been said of various other things that she had tried to do for him during the preceding months.

As to Marsham, while he dressed, he too recalled other checks that had been recently paid for him, other anxious attempts that had been made to please him. Since Diana had vanished from the scene, no complaisance, no liberality had been too much for his mother's good-will. He had never been so conscious of an atmosphere of money—much money. And there were moments—what he himself would have described as morbid moments—when it seemed to him the price of blood; when he felt himself to be a mere, crude moral tale embodied and walking about. Yet how ridiculous! What reasonable man, knowing what money means, and the power of it, but must have flinched a little under such a test as had been offered to him? His flinching had been nothing final or damnable. It was Diana, who, in her ignorance of the world, had expected him to take the sacrifice as though it were nothing and meant nothing—as no honest man of the world, in fact, could have taken it.

* * * * *

When Marsham descended he found Alicia already in possession of the drawing-room. Her gown of a brilliant shade of blue put the room out of joint, and beside the startling effect of her hair, all the washed-out decoration and conventional ornament which it contained made a worse effect than usual. There was nothing conventional or effaced about Alicia. She had become steadily more emphatic, more triumphant, more self-confident.

"Well, what have you been doing with yourself?—nothing but politics?" The careless, provocative smile with which the words were accomplished roused a kind of instant antagonism in Marsham.

"Nothing—nothing, at least, worth anybody's remembering."

"You spoke at Dunscombe last week."

"I did."

"And you went to help Mr. Collins at the Sheffield bye-election."

"I did. I am very much flattered that you know so much about my movements."

"I always know everything that you are doing," said Alicia, quietly—"you, and Cousin Lucy."

"You have the advantage of me then"; his laugh was embarrassed, but not amicable; "for I am afraid I have no idea what you have been doing since Easter!"

"I have been at home, flirting with the Curate," said Alicia, with a laugh. As she sat, with her head thrown back against the chair, the light sparkling on her white skin, on her necklace of yellow topazes, and the jewelled fan in her hands, the folds of blue chiffon billowing round her, there could be no doubt of her effectiveness. Marsham could not help laughing, too.

"Charming for the Curate! Did he propose to you?"

"Certainly. I think we were engaged for twenty-four hours."

"That you might see what it was like? Et apres?"

"He was afraid he had mistaken my character"

Marsham laughed out.

"Poor victim! May I ask what you did it for?"

He found himself looking at her with curiosity and a certain anger. To be engaged, even for twenty-four hours, means that you allow your betrothed the privileges of betrothal. And in the case of Alicia no man was likely to forego them. She was really a little too unscrupulous!

"What I did it for? He was so nice and good-looking!"

"And there was nobody else?"

"Nobody. Home was a desert."

"H'm!" said Marsham. "Is he broken-hearted?"

Alicia shrugged her shoulders a little.

"I don't think so. I write him such charming letters. It is all simmering down beautifully."

Marsham moved restlessly to and fro, first putting down a lamp, then fidgeting with an evening paper. Alicia never failed to stir in him the instinct of sex, in its combative and critical form; and hostile as he believed he was to her, her advent had certainly shaken him out of his depression.

She meanwhile watched him with her teasing eyes, apparently enjoying his disapproval.

"I know exactly what you are thinking," she said, presently.

"I doubt it."

"Heartless coquette!" she said, mimicking his voice. "Never mind—her turn will come presently!"

"You don't allow my thoughts much originality."

"Why should I? Confess!—you did think that?"

Her small white teeth flashed in the smile she gave him. There was an exuberance of life and spirits about her that was rather disarming. But he did not mean to be disarmed.

"I did not think anything of the kind," he said, returning to the fire and looking down upon her; "simply because I know you too well."

Alicia reddened a little. It was one of her attractions that she flushed so easily.

"Because you know me too well?" she repeated. "Let me see. That means that you don't believe my turn will ever come?"

Marsham smiled.

"Your turn for what?" he said, dryly.

"I think we are getting mixed up!" Her laugh was as musical as he remembered it. "Let's begin again. Ah! here comes Cousin Lucy!"

Lady Lucy entered, ushering in an elderly relation, a Miss Falloden, dwelling also in Eaton Square: a comfortable lady with a comfortable income; a social stopper of chinks, moreover, kind and talkative; who was always welcome on occasions when life was not too strenuous or the company too critical. Marsham offered her his arm, and the little party made its way to the dining-room.

* * * * *

"Do you go back to the House, Oliver, to-night?" asked his mother, as the entree went round.

He replied in the affirmative, and resumed his conversation with Alicia. She was teasing him on the subject of some of his Labor friends in the House of Commons. It appeared that she had made the Curate, who was a Christian Socialist, take her to a Labor Conference at Bristol, where all the leaders were present, and her account of the proceedings and the types was both amusing and malicious. It was the first time that Marsham had known her attempt any conversation of the kind, and he recognized that her cleverness was developing. But many of the remarks she made on persons well known to him annoyed him extremely, and he could not help trying to punish her for them. Alicia, however, was not easily punished. She evaded him with a mosquito-like quickness, returning to the charge as soon as he imagined himself to have scored with an irrelevance or an absurdity which would have been exasperating in a man, but had somehow to be answered and politely handled from a woman. He lost his footing continually; and as she had none to lose, she had, on the whole, the best of it.



Then—in the very midst of it—he remembered, with a pang, another skirmish, another battle of words—with another adversary, in a different scene. The thrill of that moment in the Tallyn drawing-room, when he had felt himself Diana's conqueror; delighting in her rosy surrender, which was the mere sweet admission of a girl's limitations; and in its implied appeal, timid and yet proud, to a victor who was also a friend—all this he was conscious of, by association, while the sparring with Alicia still went on. His tongue moved under the stimulus of hers; but in the background of the mind rose the images and sensations of the past.

Lady Lucy, meanwhile, looked on, well pleased. She had not seen Oliver so cheerful, or so much inclined to talk, since "that unfortunate affair," and she was proportionately grateful to Alicia.

Marsham returned to the drawing-room with the ladies, declaring that he must be off in twenty minutes. Alicia settled herself in a corner of the sofa, and played with Lady Lucy's dog. Marsham endeavored, for a little, to do his duty by Miss Falloden; but in a few minutes he had drifted back to Alicia. This time she made him talk of Parliament, and the two or three measures in which he was particularly interested. She showed, indeed, a rather astonishing acquaintance with the details of those measures, and the thought crossed Marsham's mind: "Has she been getting them up?—and why?" But the idea did not make the conversation she offered him any the less pleasant. Quite the contrary. The mixture of teasing and deference which she showed him, in the course of it, had been the secret of her old hold upon him. She reasserted something of it now, and he was not unwilling. During the morose and taciturn phase through which he had been passing there had been no opportunity or desire to talk of himself, especially to a woman. But Alicia had always made him talk of himself, and he had forgotten how agreeable it might be.

He threw himself down beside her, and the time passed. Lady Lucy and Miss Falloden had retired into the back drawing-room, where the one knitted and the other gossiped. But as the clock struck a quarter to eleven Lady Lucy called, in some astonishment: "So you are not going back to the House, Oliver?"

He sprang to his feet.

"Heavens!" He looked at the clock, irresolute. "Well, there's nothing much on, mother. I don't think I need."

And he subsided again into his chair beside Alicia.

Miss Falloden looked at Lady Lucy with a meaning smile.

"I didn't know they were such friends!" she said, under her breath.

Lady Lucy made no reply. But her eyes travelled through the archway dividing the two rooms to the distant figures framed within it—Alicia, upright in her corner, the red gold of her hair shining against the background of a white azalea; Oliver, deep in his arm-chair, his long legs crossed, his hands gesticulating.

Lady Niton's sarcasms recurred to her. She was not sure whether she welcomed or disliked the idea. But, after all, why not?



CHAPTER XVI

"Ecco, Signorina! il Convento!"

The driver reined up his horse, pointing with his whip.

Diana and Muriel Colwood stood up eagerly in the carriage, and there at the end of the long white road, blazing on the mountain-side, terrace upon terrace, arch upon arch, rose the majestic pile of buildings which bears the name of St. Francis. Nothing else from this point was to be seen of Assisi. The sun, descending over the mountain of Orvieto, flooded the building itself with a level and blinding light, while upon Monte Subasio, behind, a vast thunder-cloud, towering in the southern sky, threw storm-shadows, darkly purple, across the mountain-side, and from their bosom the monastery, the churches, and those huge substructures which make the platform on which the convent stands, shone out in startling splendor.

The travellers gazed their fill, and the carriage clattered on.

As they neared the town and began to climb the hill Diana looked round her—at the plain through which they had come, at the mountains to the east, at the dome of the Portiuncula. Under the rushing light and shade of the storm-clouds, the blues of the hills, the young green of the vines, the silver of the olives, rose and faded, as it were, in waves of color, impetuous and magnificent. Only the great golden building, crowned by its double church, most famous of all the shrines of Italy, glowed steadily, amid the alternating gleam and gloom—fit guardian of that still living and burning memory which is St. Francis.

"We shall be happy here, sha'n't we?" said Diana, stealing a hand into her companion's. "And we needn't hurry away."

She drew a long breath. Muriel looked at her tenderly—enchanted whenever the old enthusiasm, the old buoyancy reappeared. They had now been in Italy for nearly two months. Muriel knew that for her companion the time had passed in one long wrestle for a new moral and spiritual standing-ground. All the glory of Italy had passed before the girl's troubled eyes as something beautiful but incoherent, a dream landscape, on which only now and then her full consciousness laid hold. For to the intenser feeling of youth, full reality belongs only to the world within; the world where the heart loves and suffers. Diana's true life was there; and she did not even admit the loyal and gentle woman who had taken a sister's place beside her to a knowledge of its ebb and flow. She bore herself cheerfully and simply; went to picture-galleries and churches; sketched and read—making no parade either of sorrow or of endurance. But the impression on Mrs. Colwood all the time was of a desperately struggling soul voyaging strange seas of grief alone. She sometimes—though rarely—talked with Muriel of her mother's case; she would sometimes bring her friend a letter of her father's, or a fragment of journal from that full and tragic store which the solicitors had now placed in her hands; generally escaping afterward from all comment; only able to bear a look, a pressure of the hand. But, as a rule, she kept her pain out of sight. In the long dumb debate with herself she had grown thin and pale. There was nothing, however, to be done, nothing to be said. The devoted friend could only watch and wait. Meanwhile, of Oliver Marsham not a word was ever spoken between them.

* * * * *

The travellers climbed the hill as the sun sank behind the mountains, made for the Subasio Hotel, found letters, and ordered rooms.

Among her letters, Diana opened one from Sir James Chide. "The House will be up on Thursday for the recess, and at last I have persuaded Ferrier to let me carry him off. He is looking worn out, and, as I tell him, will break down before the election unless he takes a holiday now. So he comes—protesting. We shall probably join you somewhere in Umbria—at Perugia or Assisi. If I don't find you at one or the other, I shall write to Siena, where you said you meant to be by the first week in June. And, by-the-way, I shouldn't wonder if Bobbie Forbes were with us. He amuses Ferrier, who is very fond of him. But, of course, you needn't see anything of him unless you like."

The letter was passed on to Muriel, who thought she perceived that the news it contained seemed to make Diana shrink into herself. She was much attached to Sir James Chide, and had evidently felt pleasure in the expectation of his coming out to join them. But Mr. Ferrier—and Bobbie Forbes—both of them associated with the Marshams and Tallyn? Mrs. Colwood noticed the look of effort in the girl's delicate face, and wished that Sir James had been inspired to come alone.

After unpacking, there still remained half an hour before dark. They hurried out for a first look at the double church.

The evening was cold and the wind chill. Spring comes tardily to the high mountain town, and a light powdering of snow still lay on the topmost slope of Monte Subasio. Before going into the church they turned up the street that leads to the Duomo and the temple of Minerva. Assisi seemed deserted—a city of ghosts. Not a soul in the street, not a light in the windows. On either hand, houses built of a marvellous red stone or marble, which seemed still to hold and radiate the tempestuous light which had but just faded from them; the houses of a small provincial aristocracy, immemorially old like the families which still possessed them; close-paned, rough-hewn, and poor—yet showing here and there a doorway, a balcony, a shrine, touched with divine beauty.

"Where are all the people gone to?" cried Muriel, looking at the secret rose-colored walls, now withdrawing into the dusk, and at the empty street. "Not a soul anywhere!"

Presently they came to an open doorway—above it an inscription—"Bibliotheca dei Studii Franciscani." Everything stood open to the passer-by. They went in timidly, groped their way to the marble stairs, and mounted. All void and tenantless! At the top of the stairs was a library with dim bookcases and marble floors and busts; but no custode—no reader—not a sound!

"We seem to be all alone here—with St. Francis!" said Diana, softly, as they descended to the street—"or is everybody at church?"

They turned their steps back to the Lower Church. As they went in, darkness—darkness sudden and profound engulfed them. They groped their way along the outer vestibule or transept, finding themselves amid a slowly moving crowd of peasants. The crowd turned; they with it; and a blaze of light burst upon them.

Before them was the nave of the Lower Church, with its dark-storied chapels on either hand, itself bathed in a golden twilight, with figures of peasants and friars walking in it, vaguely transfigured. But the sanctuary beyond, the altar, the walls, and low-groined roof flamed and burned. An exposition of the Sacrament was going on. Hundreds of slender candles arranged upon and about the altar in a blazing pyramid drew from the habitual darkness in which they hide themselves Giotto's thrice famous frescos; or quickened on the walls, like flowers gleaming in the dawn, the loveliness of quiet faces, angel and saint and mother, the beauty of draped folds at their simplest and broadest, a fairy magic of wings and trumpets, of halos and crowns.

Now the two strangers understood why they had found Assisi itself deserted; emptied of its folk this quiet eve. Assisi was here, in the church which is at once the home and daily spectacle of her people. Why stay away among the dull streets and small houses of the hill-side, when there were these pleasures of eye and ear, this sensuous medley of light and color, this fellowship and society, this dramatic symbolism and movement, waiting for them below, in the church of their fathers?

So that all were here, old and young, children and youths, fathers just home from their work, mothers with their babies, girls with their sweethearts. Their happy yet reverent familiarity with the old church, their gay and natural participation in the ceremony that was going on, made on Diana's alien mind the effect of a great multitude crowding to salute their King. There, in the midst, surrounded by kneeling acolytes and bending priests, shone the Mystic Presence. Each man and woman and child, as they passed out of the shadow into the light, bent the knee, then parted to either side, each to his own place, like courtiers well used to the ways of a beautiful and familiar pageantry.

An old peasant in a blouse noticed the English ladies, beckoned to them, and with a kind of gracious authority led them through dark chapels, till he had placed them in the open space that spread round the flaming altar, and found them seats on the stone ledge that girdles the walls. An old woman saying her beads looked up smiling and made room. A baby or two ran out over the worn marble flags, gazed up at the gilt-and-silver angels hovering among the candles of the altar, and was there softly captured—wide-eyed, and laughing in a quiet ecstasy—by its watchful mother.

Diana sat down, bewildered by the sheer beauty of a marvellous and incomparable sight. Above her head shone the Giotto frescos, the immortal four, in which the noblest legend of Catholicism finds its loveliest expression, as it were the script, itself imperishable, of a dying language, to which mankind will soon have lost the key.

Yet only dying, perhaps, as the tongue of Cicero died—to give birth to the new languages of Europe.

For in Diana's heart this new language of the spirit which is the child of the old was already strong, speaking through the vague feelings and emotions which held her spellbound. What matter the garment of dogma and story?—the raiment of pleaded fact, which for the modern is no fact? In Diana, as in hundreds and thousands of her fellows, it had become—unconsciously—without the torment and struggle of an older generation—Poetry and Idea; and all the more invincible thereby.

Above her head, Poverty, gaunt and terrible in her white robe, her skirt torn with brambles, and her poor cheek defaced by the great iron hook which formerly upheld the Sanctuary lamp, married with St. Francis—Christ himself joining their hands.

So Love and Sorrow pledged each other in the gleaming color of the roof. Divine Love spoke from the altar, and in the crypt beneath their feet which held the tomb of the Poverello the ashes of Love slept.

The girl's desolate heart melted within her. In these weeks of groping, religion had not meant much to her. It had been like a bird-voice which night silences. All the energy of her life had gone into endurance. But now it was as though her soul plunged into the freshness of vast waters, which upheld and sustained—without effort. Amid the shadows and phantasms of the church—between the faces on the walls and the kneeling peasants, both equally significant and alive—those ghosts of her own heart that moved with her perpetually in the life of memory stood, or knelt, or gazed, with the rest: the piteous figure of her mother; her father's gray hair and faltering step; Oliver's tall youth. Never would she escape them any more; they were to be the comrades of her life, for Nature had given her no powers of forgetting. But here, in the shrine of St. Francis, it was as though the worst smart of her anguish dropped from her. From the dark splendor, the storied beauty of the church, voices of compassion and of peace spoke to her pain; the waves of feeling bore her on, unresisting; she closed her eyes against the lights, holding back the tears. Life seemed suspended, and suffering ceased.

* * * * *

"So we have tracked you!" whispered a voice in her ear. She looked up startled. Three English travellers had quietly made their way to the back of the altar. Sir James Chide stood beside her; and behind him the substantial form of Mr. Ferrier, with the merry snub-nosed face of Bobbie Forbes smiling over the great man's shoulder.

Diana—smiling back—put a finger to her lip; the service was at its height, and close as they were to the altar decorum was necessary. Presently, guided by her, they moved softly on to a remoter and darker corner.

"Couldn't we escape to the Upper Church?" asked Chide of Diana.

She nodded, and led the way. They stole in and out of the kneeling groups of the north transept, and were soon climbing the stairway that links the two churches, out of sight and hearing of the multitude below. Here there was again pale daylight. Greetings were interchanged, and both Chide and Ferrier studied Diana's looks with a friendly anxiety they did their best to conceal. Forbes also observed Juliet Sparling's daughter—hotly curious—yet also hotly sympathetic. What a story, by Jove!

Their footsteps echoed in the vast emptiness of the Upper Church. Apparently they had it to themselves.

"No friars!" said Forbes, looking about him. "That's a blessing, anyway! You can't deny, Miss Mallory, that they're a blot on the landscape. Or have you been flattering them up, as all the other ladies do who come here?"

"We have only just arrived. What's wrong with the friars?" smiled Diana.

"Well, we arrived this morning, and I've about taken their measure—though Ferrier won't allow it. But I saw four of them—great lazy, loafing fellows, Miss Mallory—much stronger than you or me—being dragged up these abominable hills—four of 'em—in one legno—with one wretched toast-rack of a horse. And not one of them thought of walking. Each of them with his brown petticoats, and an umbrella as big as himself. Ugh! I offered to push behind, and they glared at me. What do you think St. Francis would have said to them? Kicked them out of that legno, pretty quick, I'll bet you!"

Diana surveyed the typical young Englishman indulging a typically Protestant mood.

"I thought there were only a few old men left," she said, "and that it was all very sad and poetic?"

"That used to be so," said Ferrier, glancing round the church, so as to make sure that Chide was safely occupied in seeing as much of the Giotto frescos on the walls as the fading light allowed. "Then the Pope won a law-suit. The convent is now the property of the Holy See, the monastery has been revived, and the place seems to swarm with young monks. However, it is you ladies that ruin them. You make pretty speeches to them, and look so charmingly devout."

"There was a fellow at San Damiano this morning," interrupted Bobbie, indignantly; "awfully good-looking—and the most affected cad I ever beheld. I'd like to have been his fag-master at Eton! I saw him making eyes at some American girls as we came in; then he came posing and sidling up to us, and gave us a little lecture on 'Ateismo.' Ferrier said nothing—stood there as meek as a lamb, listening to him—looking straight at him. I nearly died of laughing behind them."

"Come here, Bobbie, you reprobate!" cried Chide from a distance. "Hold your tongue, and bring me the guide-book."

Bobbie strolled off, laughing.

"Is it all a sham, then," said Diana, looking round her with a smile and a sigh: "St. Francis—and the 'Fioretti'—and the 'Hymn to the Sun'? Has it all ended in lazy monks—and hypocrisy?"

"Dante asked himself the same question eighty years after St. Francis's death. Yet here is this divine church!"—Ferrier pointed to the frescoed walls, the marvellous roof—"here is immortal art!—and here, in your mind and in mine, after six hundred years, is a memory—an emotion—which, but for St. Francis, had never been; by which indeed we judge his degenerate sons. Is that not achievement enough—for one child of man?"

"Six hundred years hence what modern will be as much alive as St. Francis is now?" Diana wondered, as they strolled on.

He turned a quiet gaze upon her.

"Darwin? At least I throw it out."

"Darwin!" Her voice showed doubt—the natural demur of her young ignorance and idealism.

"Why not? What faith was to the thirteenth century knowledge is to us. St. Francis rekindled the heart of Europe, Darwin has transformed the main conception of the human mind."

In the dark she caught the cheerful patience of the small penetrating eyes as they turned upon her. And at the same time—strangely—she became aware of a sudden and painful impression; as though, through and behind the patience, she perceived an immense fatigue and discouragement—an ebbing power of life—in the man beside her.

"Hullo!" said Bobbie Forbes, turning back toward them, "I thought there was no one else here."

For suddenly they had become aware of a tapping sound on the marble floor, and from the shadows of the eastern end there emerged two figures: a woman in front, lame and walking with a stick, and a man behind. The cold reflected light which filled the western half of the church shone full on both faces. Bobbie Forbes and Diana exclaimed, simultaneously. Then Diana sped along the pavement.

"Who?" said Chide, rejoining the other two.

"Frobisher—and Miss Vincent," said Forbes, studying the new-comers.

"Miss Vincent!" Chide's voice showed his astonishment. "I thought she had been very ill."

"So she has," said Ferrier—"very ill. It is amazing to see her here."

"And Frobisher?"

Ferrier made no reply. Chide's expression showed perplexity, perhaps a shade of coldness. In him a warm Irish heart was joined with great strictness, even prudishness of manners, the result of an Irish Catholic education of the old type. Young women, in his opinion, could hardly be too careful, in a calumnious world. The modern flouting of old decorums—small or great—found no supporter in the man who had passionately defended and absolved Juliet Sparling.

But he followed the rest to the greeting of the new-comers. Diana's hand was in Miss Vincent's, and the girl's face was full of joy; Marion Vincent, deathly white, her eyes, more amazing, more alive than ever, amid the emaciation that surrounded them, greeted the party with smiling composure—neither embarrassed, nor apologetic—appealing to Frobisher now and then as to her travelling companion—speaking of "our week at Orvieto"—making, in fact, no secret of an arrangement which presently every member of the group about her—even Sir James Chide—accepted as simply as it was offered to them.

As to Frobisher, he was rather silent, but no more embarrassed than she. It was evident that he kept an anxious watch lest her stick should slip upon the marble floor, and presently he insisted in a low voice that she should go home and rest.

"Come back after dinner," she said to him, in the same tone as they emerged on the piazza. He nodded, and hurried off by himself.

"You are at the Subasio?" The speaker turned to Diana. "So am I. I don't dine—but shall we meet afterward?"

"And Mr. Frobisher?" said Diana, timidly.

"He is staying at the Leone. But I told him to come back."

After dinner the whole party met in Diana's little sitting-room, of which one window looked to the convent, while the other commanded the plain. And from the second, the tenant of the room had access to a small terrace, public, indeed, to the rest of the hotel, but as there were no other guests the English party took possession.

Bobbie stood beside the terrace window with Diana, gossiping, while Chide and Ferrier paced the terrace with their cigars. Neither Miss Vincent nor Frobisher had yet appeared, and Muriel Colwood was making tea. Bobbie was playing his usual part of the chatterbox, while at the same time he was inwardly applying much native shrewdness and a boundless curiosity to Diana and her affairs.

Did she know—had she any idea—that in London at that moment she was one of the main topics of conversation?—in fact, the best talked-about young woman of the day?—that if she were to spend June in town—which of course she would not do—she would find herself a succes fou—people tumbling over one another to invite her, and make a show of her? Everybody of his acquaintance was now engaged in retrying the Wing murder, since that statement of Chide's in the Times. No one talked of anything else, and the new story that was now tacked on to the old had given yet another spin to the ball of gossip.

How had the story got out? Bobbie believed that it had been mainly the doing of Lady Niton. At any rate, the world understood perfectly that Juliet Sparling's innocent and unfortunate daughter had been harshly treated by Lady Lucy—and deserted by Lady Lucy's son.

Queer fellow, Marsham!—rather a fool, too. Why the deuce didn't he stick to it? Lady Lucy would have come round; he would have gained enormous kudos, and lost nothing. Bobbie looked admiringly at his companion, vowing to himself that she was worth fighting for. But his own heart was proof. For three months he had been engaged, sub rosa, to a penniless cousin. No one knew, least of all Lady Niton, who, in spite of her championship of Diana, would probably be furious when she did know. He found himself pining to tell Diana; he would tell her as soon as ever he got an opportunity. Odd!—that the effect of having gone through a lot yourself should be that other people were strongly drawn to unload their troubles upon you. Bobbie felt himself a selfish beast; but all the same his "Ettie" and his debts; the pros and cons of the various schemes for his future, in which he had hitherto allowed Lady Niton to play so queer and tyrannical a part—all these burned on his tongue till he could confide them to Diana.

Meanwhile the talk strayed to Ferrier and politics—dangerous ground! Yet some secret impulse in Diana drew her toward it, and Bobbie's curiosity played up. Diana spoke with concern of the great man's pallor and fatigue. "Not to be wondered at," said Forbes, "considering the tight place he was in, or would soon be in." Diana asked for explanations, acting a part a little; for since her acquaintance with Oliver Marsham she had become a diligent reader of newspapers. Bobbie, divining her, gave her the latest and most authentic gossip of the clubs; as to the various incidents and gradations of the now open revolt of the Left Wing; the current estimates of Ferrier's strength in the country; and the prospects of the coming election.

Presently he even ventured on Marsham's name, feeling instinctively that she waited for it. If there was any change in the face beside him the May darkness concealed it, and Bobbie chattered on. There was no doubt that Marsham was in a difficulty. All his sympathies at least were with the rebels, and their victory would be his profit.

"Yet as every one knows that Marsham is under great obligations to Ferrier, for him to join the conspiracy these fellows are hatching doesn't look pretty."

"He won't join it!" said Diana, sharply.

"Well, a good many people think he's in it already. Oh, I dare say it's all rot!" the speaker added, hastily; "and, besides, it's not at all certain that Marsham himself will get in next time."

"Get in!" It was a cry of astonishment—passing on into constraint. "I thought Mr. Marsham's seat was absolutely safe."

"Not it." Bobbie began to flounder. "The fact is it's not safe at all; it's uncommonly shaky. He'll have a squeak for it. They're not so sweet on him down there as they used to be."

Gracious!—if she were to ask why! The young man was about hastily to change the subject when Sir James and his companion came toward them.

"Can't we tempt you out, Miss Mallory?" said Ferrier. "There is a marvellous change!" He pointed to the plain over which the night was falling. "When we met you in the church it was still winter, or wintry spring. Now—in two hours—the summer's come!"

And on Diana's face, as she stepped out to join him, struck a buffet of warm air; a heavy scent of narcissus rose from the flower-boxes on the terrace; and from a garden far below came the sharp thin prelude of a nightingale.

* * * * *

For about half an hour the young girl and the veteran of politics walked up and down—sounding each other—heart reaching out to heart—dumbly—behind the veil of words. There was a secret link between them. The politician was bruised and weary—well aware that just as Fortune seemed to have brought one of her topmost prizes within his grasp, forces and events were gathering in silence to contest it with him. Ferrier had been twenty-seven years in the House of Commons; his chief life was there, had always been there; outside that maimed and customary pleasure he found, besides, a woman now white-haired. To rule—to lead that House had been the ambition of his life. He had earned it; had scorned delights for it; and his powers were at their ripest.

Yet the intrigue, as he knew, was already launched that might, at the last moment, sweep him from his goal. Most of the men concerned in it he either held for honest fanatics or despised as flatterers of the mob—ignobly pliant. He could and would fight them all with good courage and fair hope of victory.

But Lucy Marsham's son!—that defection, realized or threatened, was beginning now to hit him hard. Amid all their disagreements of the past year his pride had always refused to believe that Marsham could ultimately make common cause with the party dissenters. Ferrier had hardly been able to bring himself, indeed, to take the disagreements seriously. There was a secret impatience, perhaps even a secret arrogance, in his feeling. A young man whom he had watched from his babyhood, had put into Parliament, and led and trained there!—that he should take this hostile and harassing line, with threat of worse, was a matter too sore and intimate to be talked about. He did not mean to talk about it. To Lady Lucy he never spoke of Oliver's opinions, except in a half-jesting way; to other people he did not speak of them at all. Ferrier's affections were deep and silent. He had not found it possible to love the mother without loving the son—had played, indeed, a father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant, flawed, unstable, attractive fellow through and through. But his knowledge left him still vulnerable. He thought little of Oliver's political capacity; and, for all his affection, had no great admiration for his character. Yet Oliver had power to cause him pain of a kind that no other of his Parliamentary associates possessed.

The letters of that morning had brought him news of an important meeting in Marsham's constituency, in which his leadership had been for the first time openly and vehemently attacked. Marsham had not been present at the meeting, and Lady Lucy had written, eagerly declaring that he could not have prevented it and had no responsibility. But could the thing have been done within his own borders without, at least, a tacit connivance on his part?

The incident had awakened a peculiarly strong feeling in the elder man, because during the early days of the recess he had written a series of letters to Marsham on the disputed matters that were dividing the party; letters intended not only to recall Marsham's own allegiance, but—through him—to reach two of the leading dissidents—Lankester and Barton—in particular, for whom he felt a strong personal respect and regard.

These letters were now a cause of anxiety to him. His procedure in writing them had been, of course, entirely correct. It is the business of a party leader to persuade. But he had warned Oliver from the beginning that only portions of them could or should be used in the informal negotiations they were meant to help. Ferrier had always been incorrigibly frank in his talk or correspondence with Marsham, ever since the days when as an Oxford undergraduate, bent on shining at the Union, Oliver had first shown an interest in politics, and had found in Ferrier, already in the front rank, the most stimulating of teachers. These remarkable letters accordingly contained a good deal of the caustic or humorous discussion of Parliamentary personalities, in which Ferrier—Ferrier at his ease—excelled; and many passages, besides, in connection with the measures desired by the Left Wing of the party, steeped in the political pessimism, whimsical or serious, in which Ferrier showed perhaps his most characteristic side at moments of leisure or intimacy; while the moods expressed in outbreaks of the kind had little or no effect on his pugnacity as a debater or his skill as a party strategist, in face of the enemy.

But, by George! if they were indiscreetly shown, or repeated, some of those things might blow up the party! Ferrier uncomfortably remembered one or two instances during the preceding year, in which it had occurred to him—as the merest fleeting impression—that Oliver had repeated a saying or had twisted an opinion of his unfairly—puzzling instances, in which, had it been any one else, Ferrier would have seen the desire to snatch a personal advantage at his, Ferrier's, expense. But how entertain such a notion in the case of Oliver! Ridiculous!

He would write no more letters, however. With the news of the Dunscombe meeting the relations between himself and Oliver entered upon a new phase. Toward Lucy's son he must bear himself—politically—henceforward, not as the intimate confiding friend or foster-father, but as the statesman with greater interests than his own to protect. This seemed to him clear; yet the effort to adjust his mind to the new conditions gave him deep and positive pain.

But what, after all, were his grievances compared with those of this soft-eyed girl? It pricked his conscience to remember how feebly he had fought her battle. She must know that he had done little or nothing for her; yet there was something peculiarly gentle, one might have thought pitiful, in her manner toward him. His pride winced under it.

* * * * *

Sir James, too, must have his private talk with Diana—when he took her to the farther extremity of the little terrace, and told her of the results and echoes which had followed the publication, in the Times, of Wing's dying statement.

Diana had given her sanction to the publication with trembling and a torn mind. Justice to her mother required it. There she had no doubt; and her will, therefore, hardened to the act, and to the publicity which it involved. But Sir Francis Wing's son was still living, and what for her was piety must be for him stain and dishonor. She did not shrink; but the compunctions she could not show she felt; and, through Sir James Chide, she had written a little letter which had done something to soften the blow, as it affected a dull yet not inequitable mind.

"Does he forgive us?" she asked, in a low voice, turning her face toward the Umbrian plain, with its twinkling lights below, its stars above.

"He knows he must have done the same in our place," said Sir James.

After a minute he looked at her closely under the electric light which dominated the terrace.

"I am afraid you have been going through a great deal," he said, bending over her. "Put it from you when you can. You don't know how people feel for you"

She looked up with her quick smile.

"I don't always think of it—and oh! I am so thankful to know! I dream of them often—my father and mother—but not unhappily. They are mine—much, much more than they ever were."

She clasped her hands, and he felt rather than saw the exaltation, the tender fire in her look.

All very well! But this stage would pass—must pass. She had her own life to live. And if one man had behaved like a selfish coward, all the more reason to invoke, to hurry on the worthy and the perfect lover.

* * * * *

Presently Marion Vincent appeared, and with her Frobisher, and an unknown man with a magnificent brow, dark eyes of a remarkable vivacity, and a Southern eloquence both of speech and gesture. He proved to be a famous Italian, a poet well known to European fame, who, having married an English wife, had settled himself at Assisi for the study of St. Francis and the Franciscan literature. He became at once the centre of a circle which grouped itself on the terrace, while he pointed to spot after spot, dimly white on the shadows of the moon-lit plain, linking each with the Franciscan legend and the passion of Franciscan poetry. The slopes of San Damiano, the sites of Spello, Bevagna, Cannara; Rivo Torto, the hovering dome of the Portiuncula, the desolate uplands that lead to the Carceri; one after another, the scenes and images—grotesque or lovely—simple or profound—of the vast Franciscan story rose into life under his touch, till they generated in those listening the answer of the soul of to-day to the soul of the Poverello. Poverty, misery, and crime—still they haunt the Umbrian villages and the Assisan streets; the shadows of them, as the north knows them, lay deep and terrible in Marion Vincent's eyes. But as the poet spoke the eternal protest and battle-cry of Humanity swelled up against them—overflowed, engulfed them. The hearts of some of his listeners burned within them.

And finally he brought them back to the famous legend of the hidden church: deep, deep in the rock—below the two churches that we see to-day; where St. Francis waits—standing, with his arms raised to heaven, on fire with an eternal hope, an eternal ecstasy.

"Waits for what?" said Ferrier, under his breath, forgetting his audience a moment. "The death of Catholicism?"

Sir James Chide gave an uneasy cough. Ferrier, startled, looked round, threw his old friend a gesture of apology which Sir James mutely accepted. Then Sir James got up and strolled away, his hands in his pockets, toward the farther end of the terrace.

The poet meanwhile, ignorant of this little incident, and assuming the sympathy of his audience, raised his eyebrows, smiling, as he repeated Ferrier's words:

"The death of Catholicism! No, Signor!—its second birth." And with a Southern play of hand and feature—the nobility of brow and aspect turned now on this listener, now on that—he began to describe the revival of faith in Italy.

"Ten years ago there was not faith enough in this country to make a heresy! On the one side, a moribund organization, poisoned by a dead philosophy; on the other, negation, license, weariness—a dumb thirst for men knew not what. And now!—if St. Francis were here—in every olive garden—in each hill town—on the roads and the by-ways—on the mountains—in the plains—his heart would greet the swelling of a new tide drawing inward to this land—the breath of a new spring kindling the buds of life. He would hear preached again, in the language of a new day, his own religion of love, humility, and poverty. The new faith springs from the very heart of Catholicism, banned and persecuted as new faiths have always been; but every day it lives, it spreads! Knowledge and science walk hand in hand with it; the future is before it. It spreads in tales and poems, like the Franciscan message; it penetrates the priesthood; it passes like the risen body of the Lord through the walls of seminaries and episcopal palaces; through the bulwarks that surround the Vatican itself. Tenderly, yet with an absolute courage, it puts aside old abuses, old ignorances!—like St. Francis, it holds out its hand to a spiritual bride—and the name of that bride is Truth! And in his grave within the rock—on tiptoe—the Poverello listens—the Poverello smiles!"

The poet raised his hand and pointed to the convent pile, towering under the moonlight. Diana's eyes filled with tears. Sir James had come back to the group, his face, with its dignified and strenuous lines, bent—half perplexed, half frowning—on the speaker. And the magic of the Umbrian night stole upon each quickened pulse.

But presently, when the group had broken up and Ferrier was once more strolling beside Diana, he said to her:

"A fine prophecy! But I had a letter this morning from another Italian writer. It contains the following passage: 'The soul of this nation is dead. The old enthusiasms are gone. We have the most selfish, the most cynical bourgeoisie in Europe. Happy the men of 1860! They had some illusions left—religion, monarchy, country. We too have men who would give themselves—if they could. But to what? No one wants them any more—nessuno li vuole piu!' Well, there are the two. Which will you believe?"

"The poet!" said Diana, in a low faltering voice. But it was no cry of triumphant faith. It was the typical cry of our generation before the closed door that openeth not.

* * * * *

"That was good," said Marion Vincent, as the last of the party disappeared through the terrace window, and she and Diana were left alone—"but this is better."

She drew Diana toward her, kissed her, and smiled at her. But the smile wrung Diana's heart.

"Why have you been so ill?—and I never knew!" She wrapped a shawl round her friend, and, holding her hands, gazed into her face.

"It was all so hurried—there was so little time to think or remember. But now there is time."

"Now you are going to rest?—and get well?"

Marion smiled again.

"I shall have holiday for a few months—then rest."

"You won't live any more in the East End? You'll come to me—in the country?" said Diana, eagerly.

"Perhaps! But I want to see all I can in my holiday—before I rest! All my life I have lived in London. There has been nothing to see—but squalor. Do you know that I have lived next door to a fried-fish shop for twelve years? But now—think!—I am in Italy—and we are going to the Alps—and we shall stay on Lake Como—and—and there is no end to our plans—if only my holiday is long enough."

What a ghost face!—and what shining eyes!

"Oh, but make it long enough!" pleaded Diana, laying one of the emaciated hands against her cheek, and smitten by a vague terror.

"That does not depend on me," said Marion, slowly.

"Marion," cried Diana, "tell me what you mean!"

Marion hesitated a moment, then said, quietly:

"Promise, dear, to take it quite simply—just as I tell it. I am so happy. There was an operation—six weeks ago. It was quite successful—I have no pain. The doctors give me seven or eight months. Then my enemy will come back—and my rest with him."

A cry escaped Diana as she buried her face in her friend's lap. Marion kissed and comforted her.

"If you only knew how happy I am!" she said, in a low voice. "Ever since I was a child I seem to have fought—fought hard for every step—every breath. I fought for bread first—and self-respect—for myself—then for others. One seemed to be hammering at shut gates or climbing precipices with loads that dragged one down. Such trouble always!" she murmured, with closed eyes—"such toil and anguish of body and brain! And now it is all over!"—she raised herself joyously—"I am already on the farther side. I am like St. Francis—waiting. And meanwhile I have a dear friend—who loves me. I can't let him marry me. Pain and disease and mutilation—of all those horrors, as far as I can, he shall know nothing. He shall not nurse me; he shall only love and lead me. But I have been thirsting for beautiful things all my life—and he is giving them to me. I have dreamed of Italy since I was a baby, and here I am! I have seen Rome and Florence. We go on to Venice. And next week there will be mountains—and snow-peaks—rivers—forests—flowers—"

Her voice sank and died away. Diana clung to her, weeping, in a speechless grief and reverence. At the same time her own murdered love cried out within her, and in the hot despair of youth she told herself that life was as much finished for her as for this tired saint—this woman of forty—who had borne since her babyhood the burdens of the poor.



CHAPTER XVII

The Whitsuntide recess passed—for the wanderers in Italy—in a glorious prodigality of sun, a rushing of bud and leaf to "feed in air," a twittering of birds, a splendor of warm nights, which for once indorsed the traditional rhapsodies of the poets. The little party of friends which had met at Assisi moved on together to Siena and Perugia, except for Marion Vincent and Frobisher. They quietly bade farewell, and went their way.

When Marion kissed Diana at parting, she said, with emphasis:

"Now, remember!—you are not to come to London! You are not to go to work in the East End. I forbid it! You are to go home—and look lovely—and be happy!"

Diana's eyes gazed wistfully into hers.

"I am afraid—I hadn't thought lately of coming to London," she murmured. "I suppose—I'm a coward. And just now I should be no good to anybody."

"All right. I don't care for your reasons—so long as you go home—and don't uproot."

Marion held her close. She had heard all the girl's story, had shown her the most tender sympathy. And on this strange wedding journey of hers she knew that she carried with her Diana's awed love and yearning remembrance.

But now she was eager to be gone—to be alone again with her best friend, in this breathing-space that remained to them.

So Diana saw them off—the shabby, handsome man, with his lean, proud, sincere face, and the woman, so frail and white, yet so indomitable. They carried various bags and parcels, mostly tied up with string, which represented all their luggage; they travelled with the peasants, fraternizing with them where they could; and it was useless, as Diana saw, to press luxuries on either of them. Many heads turned to look at them, in the streets or on the railway platform. There was something tragic in their aspect; yet not a trace of abjectness; nothing that asked for pity. When Diana last caught sight of them, Marion had a contadino's child on her knee, in the corner of a third-class carriage, and Frobisher opposite—he spoke a fluent Italian—was laughing and jesting with the father. Marion, smiling, waved her hand, and the train bore them away.

* * * * *

The others moved to Perugia, and the hours they spent together in the high and beautiful town were for all of them hours of well-being. Diana was the centre of the group. In the eyes of the three men her story invested her with a peculiar and touching interest. Their knowledge of it, and her silent acceptance of their knowledge, made a bond between her and them which showed itself in a hundred ways. Neither Ferrier, nor Chide, nor young Forbes could ever do too much for her, or think for her too loyally. And, on the other hand, it was her inevitable perception of their unspoken thoughts which gave her courage toward them—a kind of freedom which it is very difficult for women to feel or exercise in the ordinary circumstances of life. She gave them each—gratefully—a bit of her heart, in different ways.

Bobbie had adopted her as elder sister, having none of his own; and by now she knew all about his engagement, his distaste for the Foreign Office, his lack of prospects there, and his determination to change it for some less expensive and more remunerative calling. But Lady Niton was the dragon in the path. She had all sorts of ambitious projects for him, none of which, according to Forbes, ever came off, there being always some better fellow to be had. Diplomacy, in her eyes, was the natural sphere of a young man of parts and family, and as for the money, if he would only show the smallest signs of getting on, she would find it. But in the service of his country Bobbie showed no signs whatever of "getting on." He hinted uncomfortably, in his conversations with Diana, at the long list of his obligations to Lady Niton—money lent, influence exerted, services of many kinds—spread over four or five years, ever since, after a chance meeting in a country-house, she had appointed herself his earthly, providence, and he—an orphan of good family, with a small income and extravagant tastes—had weakly accepted her bounties.