“I am delighted to hear it!” said Lady Lucy, still erect and flushed.  “What do you know?”

“Simply that Lord Philip is not in the least likely to marry her, having, I imagine, views in quite other quarters—­so I am told.  But he is the least scrupulous of men—­and no doubt if, at Eastham, she threw herself into his arms—­’what mother’s son,’ et cetera.  Only, if she imagined herself to have caught him—­such an old and hardened stager!—­in a week—­her abilities are less than I supposed.”

“Alicia’s self-conceit was always her weak point.”

But as she spoke the force imparted by resentment died away.  Lady Lucy sank back in her chair.

“And Oliver felt it very much?” asked Sir James, after a pause, his shrewd eyes upon her.

“He was wounded, of course—­he has been more depressed since; but I have never believed that he was in love with her.”

Sir James did not pursue the subject, but the vivacity of the glance bent now on the fire, now on his companion, betrayed the marching thoughts behind.

“Will Oliver see me this evening?” he inquired, presently.

“I hope so.  He promised me to make the effort.”

A servant knocked at the door.  It was Oliver’s valet.

“Please, my lady, Mr. Marsham wished me to say he was afraid he would not be strong enough to see Sir James Chide to-night.  He is very sorry—­and would Sir James be kind enough to come and see him after breakfast to-morrow?”

Lady Lucy threw up her hands in a little gesture of despair, Then she rose, and went to speak to the servant in the doorway.

When she returned she looked whiter and more shrivelled than before.

“Is he worse to-night?” asked Sir James, gently.

“It is the pain,” she said, in a muffled voice; “and we can’t touch it—­yet.  He mustn’t have any more morphia—­yet.”

She sat down once more.  Sir James, the best of gossips, glided off into talk of London, and of old common friends, trying to amuse and distract her.  But he realized that she scarcely listened to him, and that he was talking to a woman whose life was being ground away between a last affection and the torment it had power to cause her.  A new Lady Lucy, indeed!  Had any one ever dared to pity her before?

Meanwhile, five miles off, a girl whom he loved as a daughter was eating her heart out for sorrow over this mother and son—­consumed, as he guessed, with the wild desire to offer them, in any sacrificial mode they pleased, her youth and her sweet self.  In one way or another he had found out that Hugh Roughsedge had been sent about his business—­of course, with all the usual softening formulae.

And now there was a kind of mute conflict going on between himself and Mrs. Colwood on the one side, and Diana on the other side.

No, she should not spend and waste her youth in the vain attempt to mend this house of tragedy!—­it was not to be tolerated—­not to be thought of.  She would suffer, but she would get over it; and Oliver would probably die.  Sooner or later she would begin life afresh, if only he was able to stand between her and the madness in her heart.