am for his
neighbor in the intermittent conversation, which was all that Lady Niton
allowed him.

Diana listened silently, but inwardly her mind was full of critical
reactions. Was this what Mr. Marsham most admired, his ideal of what a
woman should be? Was he exalting, exaggerating it a little, by way of
antithesis to those old-fashioned surroundings, that unreal atmosphere,
as he would call it, in which, for instance, he had found her--Diana--at
Rapallo--under her father's influence and bringing up? The notion
spurred her pride as well as her loyalty to her father. She began to
hold herself rather stiffly, to throw in a critical remark or two, to be
a little flippant even, at Miss Vincent's expense. Homage so warm laid
at the feet of one ideal was--she felt it--a disparagement of others;
she stood for those others; and presently Marsham began to realize a
hurtling of shafts in the air, an incipient battle between them.

He accepted it with delight. Still the same poetical, combative,
impulsive creature, with the deep soft voice! She pleased his senses;
she stirred his mind; and he would have thrown himself into one of the
old Rapallo arguments with her then and there but for the gad-fly at
his elbow.

* * * * *

Immediately after dinner Lady Niton possessed herself of Diana. "Come
here, please, Miss Mallory! I wish to make your acquaintance," Thus
commanded, the laughing but rebellious Diana allowed herself to be led
to a corner of the over-illuminated drawing-room.

"Well!"--said Lady Niton, observing her--"so you have come to settle in
these parts?"

Diana assented.

"What made you choose Brookshire?" The question was enforced by a pair
of needle-sharp eyes. "There isn't a person worth talking to within a
radius of twenty miles."

Diana declined to agree with her; whereupon Lady Niton impatiently
exclaimed: "Tut--tut! One might as well milk he-goats as talk to the
people here. Nothing to be got out of any of them. Do you like
conversation?"

"Immensely!"

"Hum!--But mind you don't talk too much. Oliver talks a great deal more
than is good for him. So you met Oliver in Italy? What do you think
of him?"

Diana, keeping a grip on laughter, said something civil.

"Oh, Oliver's clever enough--and _ambitious!_" Lady Niton threw up her
hands. "But I'll tell you what stands in his way. He says too sharp
things of people. Do you notice that?"

"He is very critical," said Dian