“Who is Mr. Marsham?”

“A gentleman we got to know at Rapallo,” said Diana, still smiling to herself.  “He and his mother were there last winter.  Father and I quarrelled with him all day long.  He is the worst Radical I ever met, but—­”

“But?—­but agreeable?”

“Oh yes,” said Diana, uncertainly, and Mrs. Colwood thought she colored—­“oh yes—­agreeable!”

“And he lives near here?”

“He is the member for the division.  Such a crew as we shall meet there!” Diana laughed out.  “I had better warn you.  But they have been very kind.  They called directly they knew I had taken the house.  ‘They’ means Mr. Oliver Marsham and his mother.  I am glad I’ve found his book!” She went off embracing it.

Mrs. Colwood was left with two impressions—­one sharp, the other vague.  One was that Mr. Oliver Marsham might easily become a personage in the story of which she had just, as it were, turned the first leaf.  The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box.  Why did it haunt her?  It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words—­which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a far-off past.

CHAPTER II

During the days immediately following her arrival at Beechcote, Mrs. Colwood applied herself to a study of Miss Mallory and her surroundings—­none the less penetrating because the student was modest and her method unperceived.  She divined a nature unworldly, impulsive, steeped, moreover, for all its spiritual and intellectual force, which was considerable, in a kind of sensuous romance—­much connected with concrete things and symbols, places, persons, emblems, or relics, any contact with which might at any time bring the color to the girl’s cheeks and the tears to her eyes. Honor—­personal or national—­the word was to Diana like a spark to dry leaves.  Her whole nature flamed to it, and there were moments when she walked visibly transfigured in the glow of it.  Her mind was rich, moreover, in the delicate, inchoate lovers, the half-poetic, half-intellectual passions, the mystical yearnings and aspirations, which haunt a pure expanding youth.  Such human beings, Mrs. Colwood reflected, are not generally made for happiness.  But there were also in Diana signs both of practical ability and of a rare common-sense.  Would this last avail to protect her from her enthusiasms?  Mrs. Colwood remembered a famous Frenchwoman of whom it was said:  “Her judgment is infallible—­her conduct one long mistake!” The little companion was already sufficiently attached to Miss Mallory to hope that in this case a natural tact and balance might not be thrown away.

As to suitors and falling in love, the natural accompaniments of such a charming youth, Mrs. Colwood came across no traces of anything of the sort.  During her journey with her father to India, Japan, and America, Miss Mallory had indeed for the first time seen something of society.  But in the villa beside the Mediterranean it was evident that her life with her father had been one of complete seclusion.  She and he had lived for each other.  Books, sketching, long walks, a friendly interest in their peasant neighbors—­these had filled their time.