It took, indeed, but a short time to discover in Miss Mallory a hunger for society which seemed to be the natural result of long starvation.  With her neighbors the Roughsedges she was already on the friendliest terms.  To Dr. Roughsedge, who was infirm, and often a prisoner to his library, she paid many small attentions which soon won the heart of an old student.  She was in love with Mrs. Roughsedge’s gray curls and motherly ways; and would consult her about servants and tradesmen with an eager humility.  She liked the son, it seemed, for the parents’ sake, nor was it long before he was allowed—­at his own pressing request—­to help in hanging pictures and arranging books at Beechcote.  A girl’s manner with young men is always a matter of interest to older women.  Mrs. Colwood thought that Diana’s manner to the young soldier could not have been easily bettered.  It was frank and gay—­with just that tinge of old-fashioned reserve which might be thought natural in a girl of gentle breeding, brought up alone by a fastidious father.  With all her impetuosity, indeed, there was about her something markedly virginal and remote, which is commoner, perhaps, in Irish than English women.  Mrs. Colwood watched the effect of it on Captain Roughsedge.  After her third day of acquaintance with him, she said to herself:  “He will fall in love with her!” But she said it with compassion, and without troubling to speculate on the lady.  Whereas, with regard to the Marsham visit, she already—­she could hardly have told why—­found herself full of curiosity.

Meanwhile, in the few days which elapsed before that visit was due, Diana was much called on by the country-side.  The girl restrained her restlessness, and sat at home, receiving everybody with a friendliness which might have been insipid but for its grace and spontaneity.  She disliked no one, was bored by no one.  The joy of her home-coming seemed to halo them all.  Even the sour Miss Bertrams could not annoy her; she thought them sensible and clever; even the tiresome Mrs. Minchin of Minchin Hall, the “gusher” of the county, who “adored” all mankind and ill-treated her step-daughter, even she was dubbed “very kind,” till Mrs. Roughsedge, next day, kindled a passion in the girl’s eyes by some tales of the step-daughter.  Mrs. Colwood wondered whether, indeed, she could be bored, as Mrs. Minchin had not achieved it.  Those who talk easily and well, like Diana, are less keenly aware, she thought, of the platitudes of their neighbors.  They are not defenceless, like the shy and the silent.

Nevertheless, it was clear that if Diana welcomed the neighbors with pleasure she often saw them go with relief.  As soon as the house was clear of them, she would stand pensively by the fire, looking down into the blaze like one on whom a dream suddenly descends—­then would often call her dog, and go out alone, into the winter twilight.  From these rambles she would return grave—­sometimes with reddened eyes.  But at all times, as Mrs.