* * * * *

The day wore on.  A misty sunshine enwrapped the beech woods.  The great trees stood marked here and there by the first fiery summons of the frost.  Their supreme moment was approaching which would strike them, head to foot, into gold and amber, in a purple air.  Lady Lucy took her drive among them as a duty, but between her and the enchanted woodland there was a gulf fixed.

She paid a visit to Oliver, trembling, as she always did, lest some obscure catastrophe, of which she was ever vaguely in dread, should have developed.  But she found him in a rather easier phase, with Lankester, who had just returned from town, reading aloud to him.  She gave them tea, thinking, as she did so, of the noisy parties gathered so recently, during the election weeks, round the tea-tables in the hall.  And then she returned to her own room to write some letters.

She looked once more with distaste and weariness at the pile of letters and notes awaiting her.  All the business of the house, the estate, the village—­she was getting an old woman; she was weary of it.  And with sudden bitterness she remembered that she had a daughter, and that Isabel had never been a real day’s help to her in her life.  Where was she now?  Campaigning in the north—­speaking at a bye-election—­lecturing for the suffrage.  Since the accident she had paid two flying visits to her mother and brother.  Oliver had got no help from her—­nor her mother; she was the Mrs. Jellyby of a more hypocritical day.  Yet Lady Lucy in her youth had been a very motherly mother; she could still recall in the depths of her being the thrill of baby palms pressed “against the circle of the breast.”

She sat down to her task, when the door opened behind her.  A footman came in, saying something which she did not catch.  “My letters are not ready yet”—­she threw over her shoulder, irritably, without looking at him.  The door closed.  But some one was still in the room.  She turned sharply in astonishment.

“May I disturb you, Lady Lucy?” said a tremulous voice.

She saw a tall and slender woman, in black, bending toward her, with a willowy appealing grace, and eyes that beseeched.  Diana Mallory stood before her.  There was a pause.  Then Lady Lucy rose slowly, laid down her spectacles, and held out her hand.

“It is very kind of you to come and see me,” she said, mechanically.  “Will you sit down?”

Diana gazed at her, with the childish short-sighted pucker of the brow that Lady Lucy remembered well.  Then she came closer, still holding Lady Lucy’s hand.

“Sir James thought I might come,” she said, breathlessly.  “Isn’t there—­isn’t there anything I might do?  I wanted you to let me help you—­like a secretary—­won’t you?  Sir James thought you looked so tired—­and this big place!—­I am sure there are things I might do—­and oh! it would make me so happy!”

Now she had her two hands clasping, fondling Lady Lucy’s.  Her eyes shone with tears, her mouth trembled.