ld woman gave a tolerant: "Noa--noa! They were
none so bad--were t' Vavasours. Only they war no good at heirin."

"Airing?" said Diana, mystified.

"Heirin," repeated Betty Dyson, emphatically. "Theer was old Squire
Henry--wi' noabody to follow 'im--an' Mr. Edward noa better--and now
thissun, wi nobbut lasses. Noa--they war noa good at heirin--moor's t'
pity." Then she looked slyly at her companion: "An' yo', miss? yo'll be
gettin' married one o' these days, I'll uphowd yer."

Diana colored and laughed.

"Ay," said the old woman, laughing too, with the merriment of a girl.
"Sweethearts is noa good--but you mun ha' a sweetheart!"

Diana fled, pursued by Betty's raillery, and then by the thought of this
lonely laughing woman, often tormented by pain, standing on the brink of
ugly death, and yet turning back to look with this merry indulgent eye
upon the past; and on this dingy old world, in which she had played so
ragged and limping a part. Yet clearly she would play it again if she
could--so sweet is mere life!--and so hard to silence in the breast.

Diana walked quickly through the woods, the prey of one of those vague
storms of feeling which test and stretch the soul of youth.

To what horrors had she been listening?--the suffering of the blinded
road-mender--the grotesque and hideous death of the young laborer in his
full strength--the griefs of a childless and penniless old woman? Yet
life had somehow engulfed the horrors; and had spread its quiet waves
above them, under a pale, late-born sunshine. The stoicism of the poor
rebuked her, as she thought of the sharp impatience and disappointment
in which she had parted from Mrs. Colwood.

She seemed to hear her father's voice. "No shirking, Diana! You asked
her--you formed absurd and exaggerated expectations. She is here; and
she is not responsible for your expectations. Make the best of her, and
do your duty!"

And eagerly the child's heart answered: "Yes, yes, papa!--dear papa!"

And there, sharp in color and line, it rose on the breast of memory, the
beloved face. It set pulses beating in Diana which from her childhood
onward had been a life within her life, a pain answering to pain, the
child's inevitable response to the father's misery, always discerned,
never understood.

This abiding remembrance of a dumb unmitigable grief beside which she
had grown up, of which she had never known the secret, was indeed one of
the main factors in Diana's personality.