Diana rose abruptly and walked to the window, where she stood, motionless—­looking out—­her back turned to Lady Niton.  Her companion glanced at her—­lifted her eyebrows—­hesitated—­and finally put the letter back into her pocket.  There was an awkward silence, when Diana suddenly returned to Lady Niton’s side.

“Where is Miss Drake?” she said, sharply.  “Is the marriage put off?”

“Marriage!” Lady Niton laughed.  “Alicia and Oliver?  H’m.  I don’t think we shall hear much more of that!”

“I thought it was settled.”

“Well, as soon as I heard of the accident and Oliver’s condition, I wondered to myself how long that young woman would keep it up.  I have no doubt the situation gave her a disturbed night or two, Alicia never can have had:  the smallest intention of spending her life, or the best years of it, in nursing a sick husband.  On the other hand, money is money.  So she went off to the Treshams’, to see if there was no third course—­that’s how I read it.”

“The Treshams’?—­a visit?—­since the accident?”

“Don’t look so astonished, my dear.  You don’t know the Alicias of this world.  But I admit we should be dull without them.  There’s a girl at the Feltons’ who has just come down from the Treshams’, and I wouldn’t have missed her stories of Alicia for a great deal.  She’s been setting her cap, it appears, at Lord Philip.  However” (Lady Niton chuckled) “there she’s met her match.”

“Rut they are engaged?” said Diana, in bewildered interrogation.

The little lady’s laugh rang out—­shrill and cracked—­like the crow of a bantam.

“She and Lord Philip?  Trust Lord Philip!”

“No, I didn’t mean that!”

“She and Oliver?  I’ve no doubt Oliver thinks—­or thought—­they were.  What view he takes now, poor fellow, I’m sure I don’t know.  But I don’t somehow think Alicia will be able to carry on the game indefinitely.  Lady Lucy is losing patience.”

Diana sat in silence.  Lady Niton could not exactly decipher her.  But she guessed at a conflict between a scrupulous or proud unwillingness to discuss the matter at all or hear it discussed, and some motive deeper still and more imperative.

“Lady Lucy has been ill too?” Diana inquired at last, in the same voice of constraint.

“Oh, very unwell indeed.  A poor, broken thing!  And there don’t seem to be anybody to look after them.  Mrs. Fotheringham is about as much good as a broomstick.  Every family ought to keep a supply of superfluous girls.  They’re like the army—­useless in peace and indispensable in war.  Ha! here’s Sir James.”

Both ladies perceived Sir James, coming briskly up the garden path.  As she saw him a thought struck Diana—­a thought which concerned Lady Niton.  It broke down the tension of her look, and there was the gleam of a smile—­sad still, and touching—­in the glance she threw at her companion.  She had been asked to tea to meet a couple of guests from London with whose affairs she was well acquainted; and she too thought Sir James had been playing Providence.