She stepped into the house.  Some one was strumming in the drawing-room—­with intervals between the strummings—­as though the player stopped to listen for something or some one.  Diana shrank into herself.  She ran up-stairs noiselessly to her sitting-room, and opened the door as quietly as possible.

“Muriel!”

The voice was almost a whisper.  Mrs. Colwood did not hear it.  She was bending over the fire, with her back to the door, and a reading-lamp beside her.  To her amazement, Diana heard a sob, a sound of stifled grief, which struck a sudden chill through her own excitement.  She paused a moment, and repeated her friend’s name.  Mrs. Colwood started.  She hastily rose, turning her face from Diana.

“Is that you?  I thought you were still out.”

Diana crossed the floor, and put her arm round the little gentle woman, whose breath was still shaken by the quiet sobs she was trying desperately to repress.

“Muriel, dear!—­what is it?”

Mrs. Colwood found her voice, and her composure.

“Nothing!  I was foolish—­it doesn’t matter.”

Diana was sure she understood.  She was suddenly ashamed to bring her own happiness into this desolate and widowed presence, and the kisses with which, mutely, she tried to comfort her friend, were almost a plea to be forgiven.

But Muriel drew herself away.  She looked searchingly, with recovered self-command, into Diana’s face.

“Has Mr. Marsham gone?”

“Yes,” said Diana, looking at her.

Then the smile within broke out, flooding eyes and lips.  Under the influence of it, Mrs. Colwood’s small tear-stained face passed through a quick instinctive change.  She, too, smiled as though she could not help it; then she bent forward and kissed Diana.

“Is it all right?”

The peculiar eagerness in the tone struck Diana.  She returned the kiss, a little wistfully.

“Were you so anxious about me?  Wasn’t it—­rather plain?”

Mrs. Colwood laughed.

“Sit down there, and tell me all about it.”

She pushed Diana into a chair and sat down at her feet.  Diana, with some difficulty, her hand over her eyes, told all that could be told of a moment the heart of which no true lover betrays.  Muriel Colwood listened with her face against the girl’s dress, sometimes pressing her lips to the hand beside her.

“Is he going to see Lady Lucy to-morrow?” she asked, when Diana paused.

“Yes.  He goes up by the first train.”

Both were silent awhile.  Diana, in the midst of all the natural flutter of blood and pulse, was conscious of a strong yearning to tell her friend more—­to say:  “And he has brought me comfort and courage—­as well as love!  I shall dare now to look into the past—­to take up my father’s burden.  If it hurts, Oliver will help me.”

But she had been brought up in a school of reticence, and her loyalty to her father and mother sealed her lips.  That anxiety, that burden, nobody must share with her but Oliver—­and perhaps his mother; his mother, so soon to be hers.