Diana smiled and nodded.

“And who is to be my fate?”

“Mr. Edgar Frobisher.  You will quarrel with him—­and like him!”

“One of the ’Socialists’?”

“Ah—­you must find out!”

He threw her a laughing backward glance as he went off to give directions to some of his other guests.  The room filled up.  Diana was aware of a tall young man, fair-haired, and evidently Scotch, whom she had not seen before, and then of a girl, whose appearance and dress riveted her attention.  She was thin and small—­handsome, but for a certain strained emaciated air, a lack of complexion and of bloom.  But her blue eyes, black-lashed and black-browed, were superb; they made indeed the note, the distinction of the whole figure.  The thick hair, cut short in the neck, was brushed back and held by a blue ribbon, the only trace of ornament in a singular costume, which consisted of a very simple morning dress, of some woollen material, nearly black, garnished at the throat and wrists by some plain white frills.  The dress hung loosely on the girl’s starved frame, the hands were long and thin, the face sallow.  Yet such was the force of the eyes, the energy of the strong chin and mouth, the flashing freedom of her smile, as she stood talking to Lady Lucy, that all the ugly plainness of the dress seemed to Diana, as she watched her, merely to increase her strange effectiveness, to mark her out the more favorably from the glittering room, from Lady Lucy’s satin and diamonds, or the shimmering elegance of Alicia Drake.

As she bowed to Mr. Frobisher, and took his arm amid the pairs moving toward the dining-room, Diana asked him eagerly who the lady in the dark dress might be.

“Oh! a great friend of mine,” he said, pleasantly.  “Isn’t she splendid?  Did you notice her evening dress?”

“Is it an evening dress?”

“It’s her evening dress.  She possesses two costumes—­both made of the same stuff, only the morning one has a straight collar, and the evening one has frills.”

“She doesn’t think it right to dress like other people?”

“Well—­she has very little money, and what she has she can’t afford to spend on dress.  No—­I suppose she doesn’t think it right.”

By this time they were settled at table, and Diana, convinced that she had found one of the two Socialists promised her, looked round for the other.  Ah! there he was, beside Mrs. Fotheringham—­who was talking to him with an eagerness rarely vouchsafed to her acquaintances.  A powerful, short-necked man, in the black Sunday coat of the workman, with sandy hair, blunt features, and a furrowed brow—­he had none of the magnetism, the strange refinement of the lady in the frills.  Diana drew a long breath.

“How odd it all is!” she said, as though to herself.

Her companion looked at her with amusement.

“What is odd?  The combination of this house—­with Barton—­and Miss Vincent?”