Meanwhile on Diana’s mind there had descended a sudden cloud of thought, dimming the ecstasy of her joy. The February day was dying in a yellowish dusk, full of beauty. They were walking along a narrow avenue of tall limes which skirted the Beechcote lands, and took them past the house. Above their heads the trees met in a brown-and-purple tracery of boughs, and on their right, through the branches, they saw a pale full moon, throning it in a silver sky. The mild air, the movements of the birds, the scents from the earth and bushes spoke of spring; and suddenly Diana perceived the gate leading to the wood where that very morning the subtle message of the changing year had come upon her, rending and probing. A longing to tell Marsham all her vague troubles rose in her, held back by a natural shrinking. But the longing prevailed, quickened by the loyal sense that she must quickly tell him all she knew about herself and her history, since there was nobody else to tell him.
“Oliver!”—she began, hurriedly—“I ought to tell you—I don’t think you know. My name wasn’t Mallory to begin with—my father took that name.”
Marsham gave a little start.
“Dear—how surprising!—and how interesting! Tell me all you can—from the year One.”
He smiled upon her, with a sparkling look that asked for all her history. But secretly he had been conscious of a shock. Lately he had made a few inquiries about the Welsh Mallorys. And the answers had been agreeable; though the old central stock of the name, to which he presumed Diana belonged, was said to be extinct. No doubt—so he had reflected—it had come to an end in her father.
“Mallory was the name of my father’s mother. He took it for various reasons—I never quite understood—and I know a good deal of property came to him. But his original name—my name—was Sparling.”
“Sparling!” A pause. “And have you any Sparling relations.”
“No. They all died out—I think—but I know so little!—when I was small. However, I have a box of Sparling papers which I have never examined. Perhaps—some day—we might look at them together.”
Her voice shook a little.
“You have never looked at them?”
“Never.”
“But why, dearest?”
“It always seemed to make papa so unhappy—anything to do with his old name. Oliver!”—she turned upon him suddenly, and for the first time she clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder—“Oliver!—I don’t know what made him unhappy—I don’t know why he changed his name. Sometimes I think—there may have been some terrible thing between him—and my mother.”
He put his arm round her, close and tenderly.
“What makes you think that?” Then he whispered to her—“Tell your lover—your husband—tell him everything.”
She shrank in delicious tremor from the great word, and it was a few moments before she could collect her thoughts. Then she said—still resting against him in the dark—and in a low rapid voice, as though she followed the visions of an inner sense: