r. Diana was upon
him in a moment--very cool and graceful--controlling herself well; and
it is probable that she would have won the day triumphantly but for the
sudden intervention of her host.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Ferrier perceived her annoyance, and smiled over it. In spite of his
long friendship