These things Sir James did not disclose.  He played Diana’s game with perfect discretion.  He guessed, even that Fanny was in the house, but he said not a word.  No need at all to question the young woman.  If in such a case he could not get round a rascally solicitor, what could he do?—­and what was the good of being the leader of the criminal Bar?

Only when Diana, at the end of their walk, shyly remarked that money was not to stand in the way; that she had plenty; that Beechcote was no doubt too expensive for her, but that the tenancy was only a yearly one, and she had but to give notice at Michaelmas, which she thought of doing—­only then did Sir James allow himself a laugh.

“You think I am going to let this business turn you out of Beechcote—­eh?—­you preposterous little angel!”

“Not this business,” stammered Diana; “but I am really living at too great a rate.”

Sir James grinned, patted her ironically on the shoulder, told her to be a good girl, and departed.

* * * * *

Fanny stayed for a week at Beechcote, and at the end of that time Diana and Mrs. Colwood accompanied her on a Saturday to town, and she was married, to a sheepish and sulky bridegroom, by special license, at a Marylebone church—­Sir James Chide, in the background, looking on.  They departed for a three days’ holiday to Brighton, and on the fourth day they were due to sail by a West Indian steamer for Barbadoes, where Sir James had procured for Mr. Frederick Birch a post in the office of a large sugar estate, in which an old friend of Chide’s had an interest.  Fanny showed no rapture in the prospect of thus returning to the bosom of her family.  But there was no help for it.

By what means the transformation scene had been effected it would be waste of time to inquire.  Much to Diana’s chagrin, Sir James entirely declined to allow her to aid in it financially, except so far as equipping her cousin with clothes went, and providing her with a small sum for her wedding journey.  Personally, he considered that the week during which Fanny stayed at Beechcote was as much as Diana could be expected to contribute, and that she had indeed paid the lion’s share.

Yet that week—­if he had known—­was full of strange comfort to Diana.  Often Muriel, watching her, would escape to her own room to hide her tears.  Fanny’s second visit was not as her first.  The first had seen the outraging and repelling of the nobler nature by the ignoble.  Diana had frankly not been able to endure her cousin.  There was not a trace of that now.  Her father’s papers had told her abundantly how flimsy, how nearly fraudulent, was the financial claim which Fanny and her belongings had set up.  The thousand pounds had been got practically on false pretences, and Diana knew it now, in every detail.  Yet neither toward that, nor toward Fanny’s other and worse lapses, did she show any bitterness, any spirit of mere disgust