ady Niton." For her
glance of appeal had brought Mrs. Colwood to her aid, and between them
they coped with this _enfant terrible_ among dowagers till the
gentlemen came in.

"Here is Sir James Childe," said Lady Niton, rising. "He wants to talk
to you, and he don't like me. So I'll go."

Sir James, not without a sly smile, discharged arrow-like at the
retreating enemy, took the seat she had vacated.

"This is your first visit to Tallyn, Miss Mallory?"

The voice speaking was the _voix d'or_ familiar to Englishmen in many a
famous case, capable of any note, any inflection, to which sarcasm or
wrath, shrewdness or pathos, might desire to tune it. In this case it
was gentleness itself; and so was the countenance he turned upon Diana.
Yet it was a countenance built rather for the sterner than the milder
uses of life. A natural majesty expressed itself in the domed forehead,
and in the fine head, lightly touched with gray; the eyes too were gray,
the lips prominent and sensitive, the face long, and, in line, finely
regular. A face of feeling and of power; the face of a Celt, disciplined
by the stress and conflict of a non-Celtic world. Diana's young
sympathies sprang to meet it, and they were soon in easy conversation.

Sir James questioned her kindly, but discreetly. This was really her
first visit to Brookshire?

"To England!" said Diana; and then, on a little wooing, came out the
girl's first impressions, natural, enthusiastic, gay. Sir James
listened, with eyes half-closed, following every movement of her lips,
every gesture of head and hand.

"Your parents took you abroad quite as a child?"

"I went with my father. My mother died when I was quite small."

Sir James did not speak for a moment. At last he said:

"But before you went abroad, you lived in London?"

"Yes--in Kensington Square."

Sir James made a sudden movement which displaced a book on a little
table beside him. He stooped to pick it up.

"And your father was tired of England?"

Diana hesitated--

"I--I think he had gone through great trouble. He never got over mamma's
death."

"Oh yes, I see," said Sir James, gently. Then, in another tone:

"So you settled on that beautiful coast? I wonder if that was the winter
I first saw Italy?"

He named the year.

"Yes--that was the year," said Diana. "Had you never seen Italy before
that?" She looked at him in a little surprise.

"Do I seem to you so old?" said Sir James, smiling. "I had bee