Her emphatic reference to Marsham had brought the ready color to Diana’s cheeks.

“Yes—­there seems no chance!—­” she said, shyly, and regretfully, as the rain beat on the window.

“Oh, dear me, yes!” said a voice behind them.  “The glass is going up.  It’ll be a fine afternoon—­and we’ll go and meet them at Holme Copse.  Sha’n’t we, Lady Lucy?”

Mr. Ferrier appeared, coming up from the library laden with papers.  The three stood chatting together on the broad gallery which ran round the hall.  The kindness of the two elders was so marked that Diana’s spirits returned; she was not to be quite a pariah it seemed!  As she walked away toward her room, Mr. Ferrier’s eyes pursued her—­the slim round figure, the young loveliness of her head and neck.

“Well!—­what are you thinking about her?” he said, eagerly, turning to the mistress of the house.

Lady Lucy smiled.

“I should prefer it if she didn’t talk politics,” she said, with the slightest possible stiffness, “But she seems a very charming girl.”

“She talks politics, my dear lady, because living alone with her father and with her books, she has had nothing else to talk about but politics and books.  Would you rather she talked scandal—­or Monte Carlo?”

The Quaker in Lady Lucy laughed.

“Of course if she married Oliver, she would subordinate her opinions to his.”

“Would she!” said Mr. Ferrier—­“I’m not so sure!”

Lady Lucy replied that if not, it would be calamitous.  In which she spoke sincerely.  For although now the ruler, and, if the truth were known, the somewhat despotic ruler of Tallyn, in her husband’s lifetime she had known very well how to obey.

“I have asked various people about the Mallorys,” she resumed.  “But nobody seems to be able to tell me anything.”

“I trace her to Sir Thomas of that ilk.  Why not?  It is a Welsh name!”

“I have no idea who her mother was,” said Lady Lucy, musing.  “Her father was very refined—­quite a gentleman.”

“She bears, I think, very respectable witness to her mother,” laughed Ferrier.  “Good stock on both sides; she carries it in her face.”

“That’s all I ask,” said Lady Lucy, quietly.

“But that you do ask!” Her companion looked at her with an eye half affectionate, half ironic.  “Most exclusive of women!  I sometimes wish I might unveil your real opinions to the Radical fellows who come here.”

Lady Lucy colored faintly.

“That has nothing to do with politics.”

“Hasn’t it?  I can’t imagine anything that has more to do with them.”

“I was thinking of character—­honorable tradition—­not blood.”

Ferrier shook his head.

“Won’t do.  Barton wouldn’t pass you—­’A man’s a man for a’ that’—­and a woman too.”

“Then I am a Tory!” said Lady Lucy, with a smile that shot pleasantly through her gray eyes.