But he followed the rest to the greeting of the new-comers.  Diana’s hand was in Miss Vincent’s, and the girl’s face was full of joy; Marion Vincent, deathly white, her eyes, more amazing, more alive than ever, amid the emaciation that surrounded them, greeted the party with smiling composure—­neither embarrassed, nor apologetic—­appealing to Frobisher now and then as to her travelling companion—­speaking of “our week at Orvieto”—­making, in fact, no secret of an arrangement which presently every member of the group about her—­even Sir James Chide—­accepted as simply as it was offered to them.

As to Frobisher, he was rather silent, but no more embarrassed than she.  It was evident that he kept an anxious watch lest her stick should slip upon the marble floor, and presently he insisted in a low voice that she should go home and rest.

“Come back after dinner,” she said to him, in the same tone as they emerged on the piazza.  He nodded, and hurried off by himself.

“You are at the Subasio?” The speaker turned to Diana.  “So am I. I don’t dine—­but shall we meet afterward?”

“And Mr. Frobisher?” said Diana, timidly.

“He is staying at the Leone.  But I told him to come back.”

After dinner the whole party met in Diana’s little sitting-room, of which one window looked to the convent, while the other commanded the plain.  And from the second, the tenant of the room had access to a small terrace, public, indeed, to the rest of the hotel, but as there were no other guests the English party took possession.

Bobbie stood beside the terrace window with Diana, gossiping, while Chide and Ferrier paced the terrace with their cigars.  Neither Miss Vincent nor Frobisher had yet appeared, and Muriel Colwood was making tea.  Bobbie was playing his usual part of the chatterbox, while at the same time he was inwardly applying much native shrewdness and a boundless curiosity to Diana and her affairs.

Did she know—­had she any idea—­that in London at that moment she was one of the main topics of conversation?—­in fact, the best talked-about young woman of the day?—­that if she were to spend June in town—­which of course she would not do—­she would find herself a succes fou—­people tumbling over one another to invite her, and make a show of her?  Everybody of his acquaintance was now engaged in retrying the Wing murder, since that statement of Chide’s in the Times.  No one talked of anything else, and the new story that was now tacked on to the old had given yet another spin to the ball of gossip.

How had the story got out?  Bobbie believed that it had been mainly the doing of Lady Niton.  At any rate, the world understood perfectly that Juliet Sparling’s innocent and unfortunate daughter had been harshly treated by Lady Lucy—­and deserted by Lady Lucy’s son.