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

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

Diana looked up and saw her descending the stairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lady Lucy smiled.

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