Yet so bewildered was she that when Sir James addressed her, she stared at him in what seemed a fit of shyness.  And when she began to talk it was at random, for her mind was in a tumult.  But Sir James soon divined her.  Vulgarity, conceit, ill-breeding—­the great lawyer detected them in five minutes’ conversation.  Nor were they unexpected; for he was well acquainted with Miss Fanny’s origins.  Yet the perception of them made the situation still more painfully interesting to him, and no less mysterious than before.  For he saw no substantial change in it; and he was, in truth, no less perplexed than Fanny.  If certain things had happened in consequence of Miss Merton’s advent, neither he nor any other guest would be sitting at Diana Mallory’s table that day; of that he was morally certain.  Therefore, they had not happened.

He returned with a redoubled tenderness of feeling to his conversation with Diana.  He had come to Overton for the Sunday, at great professional inconvenience, for nothing in the world but that he must pay this visit to Beechcote; and he had approached the house with dread—­dread lest he should find a face stricken with the truth.  That dread was momentarily lifted, for in those beautiful dark eyes of Diana innocence and ignorance were still written; but none the less he trembled for her; he saw her as he had seen her at Tallyn, a creature doomed, and consecrate to pain.  Why, in the name of justice and pity, had her father done this thing?  So it is that a man’s love, for lack of a little simple courage and common-sense, turns to cruelty.

Poor, poor child!—­At first sight he, like the Roughsedges, had thought her pale and depressed.  Then he had given his message.  “Marsham has arrived!—­turned up at Overton a couple of hours ago—­and told us to say he would follow us here after luncheon.  He wired to Lady Felton this morning to ask if she would take him in for the Sunday.  Some big political meeting he had for to-night is off.  Lady Lucy stays in town—­and Tallyn is shut up.  But Lady Felton was, of course, delighted to get him.  He arrived about noon.  Civility to his hostess kept him to luncheon—­then he pursues us!”

Since then!—­no lack of sparkle in the eyes or color in the cheek!  Yet even so, to Sir James’s keen sense, there was an increase, a sharpening, in Diana’s personality, of the wistful, appealing note, which had been always touching, always perceptible, even through the radiant days of her Tallyn visit.

Ah, well!—­like Dr. Roughsedge, only with a far deeper urgency, he, too, for want of any better plan, invoked the coming lover.  In God’s name, let Marsham take the thing into his own hands!—­stand on his own feet!—­dissipate a nightmare which ought never to have arisen—­and gather the girl to his heart.

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