Suddenly Marsham dropped down beside her.

“I see it all with new eyes,” he said, passionately.  “I have lived in this country from my childhood; and I never saw it before!  Diana!—­”

He raised her hand, which only faintly resisted; he looked into her eyes.  She had grown very pale—­enchantingly pale.  There was in her the dim sense of a great fulfilment; the fulfilment of Nature’s promise to her; implicit in her woman’s lot from the beginning.

“Diana!—­” the low voice searched her heart—­“You know—­what I have come to say?  I meant to have waited a little longer—­I was afraid!—­but I couldn’t wait—­it was beyond my strength.  Diana!—­come to me, darling!—­be my wife!”

He kissed the hand he held.  His eyes beseeched; and into hers, widely fixed upon him, had sprung tears—­the tears of life’s supremest joy.  Her lip trembled.

“I’m not worthy!” she said, in a whisper—­“I’m not worthy!”

“Foolish Diana!—­Darling, foolish Diana!—­Give me my answer!”

And now he held both hands, and his confident smile dazzled her.

“I—­” Her voice broke.  She tried again, still in a whisper.  “I will be everything to you—­that a woman can.”

At that he put his arm round her, and she let him take that first kiss, in which she gave him her youth, her life—­all that she had and was.  Then she withdrew herself, and he saw her brow contract, and her mouth.

“I know!”—­he said, tenderly—­“I know!  Dear, I think he would have been glad.  He and I made friends from the first.”

She plucked at the heather beside her, trying for composure.  “He would have been so glad of a son—­so glad—­”

And then, by contrast with her own happiness, the piteous memory of her father overcame her; and she cried a little, hiding her eyes against Marsham’s shoulder.

“There!” she said, at last, withdrawing herself, and brushing the tears away.  “That’s all—­that’s done with—­except in one’s heart.  Did—­did Lady Lucy know?”

She looked at him timidly.  Her aspect had never been more lovely.  Tears did not disfigure her, and as compared with his first remembrance of her, there was now a touching significance, an incomparable softness in all she said and did, which gave him a bewildering sense of treasures to come, of joys for the gathering.

Suddenly—­involuntarily—­there flashed through his mind the recollection of his first love-passage with Alicia—­how she had stung him on, teased, and excited him.  He crushed it at once, angrily.

As to Lady Lucy, he smilingly declared that she had no doubt guessed something was in the wind.