And now, in the English House of Commons, there were men who doubted and sneered about these things—­who held an Afridi life dearer than an English one—­who cared nothing for the historic task, who would let India go to-morrow without a pang!

Misguided recreants!  But Mrs. Colwood, looking on, could only feel that had they never played their impish part, the winter afternoon for these two companions of hers would have been infinitely less agreeable.

For certainly denunication and argument became Diana—­all the more that she was no “female franzy” who must have all the best of the talk; she listened—­she evoked—­she drew on, and drew out.  Mrs. Colwood was secretly sure that this very modest and ordinarily stupid young man had never talked so well before, that his mother would have been astonished could she have beheld him.  What had come to the young women of this generation!  Their grandmothers cared for politics only so far as they advanced the fortunes of their lords—­otherwise what was Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?  But these women have minds for the impersonal.  Diana was not talking to make an effect on Captain Roughsedge—­that was the strange part of it.  Hundreds of women can make politics serve the primitive woman’s game; the “come hither in the ee” can use that weapon as well as any other.  But here was an intellectual, a patriotic passion, veritable, genuine, not feigned.

Well!—­the spectator admitted it—­unwillingly—­so long as the debater, the orator, were still desirable, still lovely.  She stole a glance at Captain Roughsedge.  Was he, too, so unconscious of sex, of opportunity?  Ah! that she doubted!  The young man played his part stoutly; flung back the ball without a break; but there were glances, and movements and expressions, which to this shrewd feminine eye appeared to betray what no scrutiny could detect in Diana—­a pleasure within a pleasure, and thoughts behind thoughts.  At any rate, he prolonged the walk as long as it could be prolonged; he accompanied them to the very door of their carriage, and would have delayed them there but that Diana looked at her watch in dismay.

“You’ll hear plenty of that sort of stuff to-night!” he said, as he helped them to their wraps. “‘Perish India!’ and all the rest of it.  All they’ll mind at Tallyn will be that the Afridis haven’t killed a few more Britishers.”

Diana gave him a rather grave smile and bow as the carriage drove on.  Mrs. Colwood wondered whether the Captain’s last remark had somehow offended her companion.  But Miss Mallory made no reference to it.  Instead, she began to give her companion some preliminary information as to the party they were likely to find at Tallyn.