evening which followed live warm in the heart
of Diana. It was to her an evening of triumph--triumph innocent,
harmless, and complete. Her charm, her personality had by now captured
the whole party, save for an opposition of three--and the three realized
that they had for the moment no chance of influencing the popular voice.
The rugged face of Mr. Barton stiffened as she approached; it seemed to
him that the night before he had been snubbed by a chit, and he was not
the man to forget it easily. Alicia Drake was a little pale and a little
silent during the evening, till, late in its course, she succeeded in
carrying off a group of young men who had come for the shoot and were
staying the night, and in establishing a noisy court among them Mrs.
Fotheringham disapproved, by now, of almost everything that concerned
Miss Mallory: of her taste in music or in books, of the touch of
effusion in her manner, which was of course "affected" or
"aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she did _not_ possess, no less than
of those She did. On the sacred subject of the suffrage, for instance,
which with Mrs. Fotheringham was a matter for propaganda everywhere and
at all times, Diana was but a cracked cymbal, when struck she gave back
either no sound at all, or a wavering one. Her beautiful eyes were blank
or hostile; she would escape like a fawn from the hunter. As for other
politics, no one but Mrs. Fotheringham dreamed of introducing them. She,
however, would have discovered many ways of dragging them in, and of
setting down Diana; but here her brother was on the watch, and time
after time she found herself checked or warded off.

Diana, indeed, was well defended. The more ill-humored Mrs. Fotheringham
grew, the more Lady Niton enjoyed the evening and her own "Nitonisms."
It was she who after dinner suggested the clearing of the hall and an
impromptu dance--on the ground that "girls must waltz for their living."
And when Diana proved to be one of those in whom dancing is a natural
and shining gift, so that even the gilded youths of the party, who were
perhaps inclined to fight shy of Miss Mallory as "a girl who talked
clever," even they came crowding about her, like flies about a
milk-pail--it was Lady Niton who drew Isabel Fotheringham's attention to
it loudly and repeatedly. It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing
and at a hint from Mrs. Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the
grand piano which had been pushed into a corner