Colwood soon began to realize, there was but a thin line of division between her gayety and some inexplicable sadness, some unspoken grief, which seemed to rise upon her and overshadow her, like a cloud tangled in the woods of spring.  Mrs. Colwood could only suppose that these times of silence and eclipse were connected in some way with her father and her loss of him.  But whenever they occurred, Mrs. Colwood found her own mind invincibly recalled to that name on the box of papers, which still haunted her, still brought with it a vague sense of something painful and harrowing—­a breath of desolation, in strange harmony, it often seemed, with certain looks and moods of Diana.  But Mrs. Colwood searched her memory in vain.  And, indeed, after a little while, some imperious instinct even forbade her the search—­so rapid and strong was the growth of sympathy with the young life which had called her to its aid.

* * * * *

The day of the Marsham visit arrived—­a January afternoon clear and frosty.  In the morning before they were to start, Diana seemed to be often closeted with her maid, and once in passing Miss Mallory’s open door, her companion could not help seeing a consultation going on, and a snowy white dress, with black ribbons, lying on the bed.  Heretofore Diana had only appeared in black, the strict black which French dressmakers understand, for it was little more than a year since her father’s death.  The thought of seeing her in white stirred Mrs. Colwood’s expectations.

Tallyn Hall was eight miles from Beechcote.  The ladies were to drive, but in order to show Mrs. Colwood something of the country, Diana decreed that they should walk up to the downs by a field path, meeting the carriage which bore their luggage at a convenient point on the main road.

The day was a day of beauty—­the trees and grass lightly rimed, the air sparkling and translucent.  Nature was held in the rest of winter; but beneath the outward stillness, one caught as it were the strong heart-beat of the mighty mother.  Diana climbed the steep down without a pause, save when she turned round from time to time to help her companion.  Her slight firm frame, the graceful decision of her movements, the absence of all stress and effort showed a creature accustomed to exercise and open air; Mrs. Colwood, the frail Anglo-Indian to whom walking was a task, tried to rival her in vain; and Diana was soon full of apologies and remorse for having tempted her to the climb.

“Please!—­please!”—­the little lady panted, as they reached the top—­“wasn’t this worth it?”

For they stood in one of the famous wood and common lands of Southern England—­great beeches towering overhead—­glades opening to right and left—­ferny paths over green turf-tracks, and avenues of immemorial age, the highways of a vanished life—­old earth-works, overgrown—­lanes deep-sunk in the chalk where the pack-horses once made their way—­gnarled thorns, bent with years, yet still white-mantled in the spring:  a wild, enchanted no-man’s country, owned it seemed by rabbits and birds, solitary, lovely, and barren—­yet from its furthest edge, the high spectator, looking eastward, on a clear night, might see on the horizon the dim flare of London.