Diana said nothing.  She was hanging over the fire, and her face was hidden.  Fanny waited a moment, then opened the door and went.

* * * * *

As soon as the carriage conveying Miss Merton to the station had safely driven off, Mrs. Colwood, who, in no conventional sense, had been speeding the parting guest, ran up-stairs again to Diana’s room.

“She’s gone?” said Diana, faintly.  She was standing by the window.  As she spoke the carriage came into view at a bend of the drive and disappeared into the trees beyond.  Mrs. Colwood saw her shiver.

“Did she leave you her address?”

“Yes.  Don’t think any more about her.  I have something to tell you.”

Diana’s painful start was the measure of her state.  Muriel Colwood put her arms tenderly round the slight form.

“Mr. Marsham will be here directly.  He came last night—­too late—­I would not let him see you.  Ah!” She released Diana, and made a rapid step to the window.  “There he is!—­coming by the fields.”

Diana sat down, as though her limbs trembled under her.

“Did you send for him?”

“Yes.  You forgive me?”

“Then—­he hasn’t got my letter.”

She said it without looking up, as though to herself.

Mrs. Colwood knelt down beside her.

“It is right he should be here,” she said, with energy, almost with command; “it is the right, natural thing.”

Diana stooped, mechanically, and kissed her; then sprang up, quivering, the color rushing into her cheeks.  “Why, he mayn’t even know!” She threw a piteous look at her companion.

“He does know, dear—­he does know.”

Diana composed herself.  She lifted her hands to a tress of hair that was unfastened, and put it in its place.  Instinctively she straightened her belt, her white collar.  Mrs. Colwood noticed that she was in black again, in one of the dresses of her mourning.

* * * * *

When Marsham turned, at the sound of the latch, to see Diana coming in, all the man’s secret calculations and revolts were for the moment scattered and drowned in sheer pity and dismay.  In a few short hours can grief so work on youth?  He ran to her, but she held up a hand which arrested him half-way.  Then she closed the door, but still stood near it, as though she feared to move, or speak, looking at him with her appealing eyes.

“Oliver!”

He held out his hands.

“My poor, poor darling!”

She gave a little cry, as though some tension broke.  Her lips almost smiled; but she held him away from her.

“You’re not—­not ashamed of me?”

His protests were the natural, the inevitable protests that any man with red blood in his veins must need have uttered, brought face to face with so much sorrow and so much beauty.  She let him make them, while her left hand gently stroked and caressed his right hand which held hers; yet all the time resolutely turning her face and her soft breast away, as though she dreaded to be kissed, to lose will and identity in the mere delight of his touch.  And he felt, too, in some strange way, as though the blow that had fallen upon her had placed her at a distance from him; not disgraced—­but consecrate.