Sir James wandered on into a small drawing-room at the end of the long suite of rooms; in its seclusion he turned back to look at the group he had left behind.  His face, always delicately pale, had grown strained and white.

“Is it possible”—­he said to himself—­“that she knows nothing?—­that that man was able to keep it all from her?”

He walked up and down a little by himself—­pondering—­the prey of the same emotion as had seized him in the afternoon; till at last his ear was caught by some hubbub, some agitation in the big drawing-room, especially by the sound of the girlish voice he had just been listening to, only speaking this time in quite another key.  He returned to see what was the matter.

* * * * *

He found Miss Mallory the centre of a circle of spectators and listeners, engaged apparently in a three-cornered and very hot discussion with Mr. Barton, the Socialist member, and Oliver Marsham.  Diana had entirely forgotten herself, her shyness, the strange house, and all her alarms.  If Lady Niton took nothing for granted at Tallyn, that was not, it seemed, the case with John Barton.  He, on the contrary, took it for granted that everybody there was at least a good Radical, and as stoutly opposed as himself to the “wild-cat” and “Jingo” policy of the Government on the Indian frontier, where one of our perennial little wars was then proceeding.  News had arrived that afternoon of an indecisive engagement, in which the lives of three English officers and some fifty men of a Sikh regiment had been lost.  Mr. Barton, in taking up the evening paper, lying beside Diana, which contained the news, had made very much the remark foretold by Captain Roughsedge in the afternoon.  It was, he thought, a pity the repulse had not been more decisive—­so as to show all the world into what a hornet’s nest the Government was going—­“and a hornet’s nest which will cost us half a million to take before we’ve done.”

Diana’s cheeks flamed.  Did Mr. Barton mean to regret that no more English lives had been lost?

Mr. Barton was of opinion that if the defeat had been a bit worse, bloodshed might have been saved in the end.  A Jingo Viceroy and a Jingo press could only be stopped by disaster—­

On the contrary, said Diana, we could not afford to be stopped by disaster.  Disaster must be retrieved.

Mr. Barton asked her—­why?  Were we never to admit that we were in the wrong?

The Viceroy and his advisers, she declared, were not likely to be wrong.  And prestige had to be maintained.

At the word “prestige” the rugged face of the Labor member grew contemptuous and a little angry.  He dealt with it as he was accustomed to deal with it in Socialist meetings or in Parliament.  His touch in doing so was neither light nor conciliatory; the young lady, he thought, required plain speaking.

But so far from intimidating the young lady, he found in the course of a few more thrusts and parries that he had roused a by no means despicable antagonist.  Diana was a mere mouth-piece; but she was the mouth-piece of eye-witnesses; whereas Barton was the mouth-piece of his daily newspaper and a handful of partisan books written to please the political section to which he belonged.