--the noblest and the
dearest--throw themselves away. She, with all the right and proper
feelings of an Englishwoman, to mate with this plausible Radical and
Little Englander! Hugh kicked the stones of the gravel savagely to right
and left as he walked back to the house--in a black temper with his
poverty and Diana's foolishness.

But was she really in love? "Why then so pale, fond lover?" He found a
kind of angry comfort in the remembrance of her drooping looks. They
were no credit to Marsham, anyway.

Meanwhile Diana walked home, lingering by the way in two or three
cottages. She was shyly beginning to make friends with the people. An
old road-mender kept her listening while he told her how a Tallyn keeper
had peppered him in the eye, ten years before, as he was crossing Barrow
Common at dusk. One eye had been taken out, and the other was almost
useless; there he sat, blind, and cheerfully telling the tale--"Muster
Marsham--Muster Henry Marsham--had been verra kind--ten shillin' a week,
and an odd job now and then. I do suffer terr'ble, miss, at times--but
ther's noa good in grumblin'--is there?"

Next door, in a straggling line of cottages, she found a gentle,
chattering widow whose husband had been drowned in the brew-house at
Beechcote twenty years before, drowned in the big vat!--before any one
had heard a cry or a sound. The widow was proud of so exceptional a
tragedy; eager to tell the tale. How had she lived since? Oh, a bit here
and a bit there. And, of late, half a crown from the parish.

Last of all, in a cottage midway between the village and Beechcote, she
paused to see a jolly middle-aged woman, with a humorous eye and a
stream of conversation--held prisoner by an incurable disease. She was
absolutely alone in the world. Nobody knew what she had to live on. But
she could always find a crust for some one more destitute than herself,
and she ranked high among the wits of the village. To Diana she talked
of her predecessors--the Vavasours--whose feudal presence seemed to be
still brooding over the village. With little chuckles of laughter, she
gave instance after instance of the tyranny with which they had lorded
it over the country-side in early Victorian days: how the "Madam
Vavasour" of those days had pulled the feathers from the village-girls'
hats, and turned a family who had offended her, with all their
belongings, out into the village street. But when Diana rejoiced that
such days were done, the o