Diana nodded, unable to speak.

“It may be so.  But the doctors don’t agree.”  Then with a manner that recalled old days:  “May I ask—­I don’t know that I have the right—­what he said to you?”

She had withdrawn her arm, and the two confronted each other.

“Perhaps you won’t allow it,” said Diana, piteously.  “He said I might only stay, if—­if he might tell me—­he loved me.”

“Allow it?” said Lady Lucy, vaguely—­“allow it?”

She fell into her chair, and Diana looked down upon her, hanging on the next word.

Lady Lucy made various movements as though to speak, which came to nothing.

“I have no one—­but him,” she said at last, with pathetic irrelevance.  “No one.  Isabel—­”

Her voice failed her.  Diana held out her hands, the tears running down her cheeks.  “Dear Lady Lucy, let me!  I am yours—­and Oliver’s.”

“It will, perhaps, be only a few weeks—­or months—­and then he will be taken from us.”

“But give me the right to those weeks.  You wouldn’t—­you wouldn’t separate us now!”

Lady Lucy suddenly broke down.  Diana clung to her with tears, and in that hour she became as a daughter to the woman who had sentenced her youth.  Lady Lucy asked no pardon in words, to Diana’s infinite relief; but the surrender of weakness and sorrow was complete.  “Sir James will forbid it,” she said at last, when she had recovered her calm.

“No one shall forbid it!” said Diana, rising with a smile.  “Now, may I answer some of those letters for you?”

* * * * *

For some weeks after this Diana went backward and forward daily, or almost daily, between Beechcote and Tallyn.  Then she migrated to Tallyn altogether, and Muriel Colwood with her.  Before and after that migration wisdom had been justified of her children in the person of the doctor.  Hugh Roughsedge’s leave had been prolonged, owing to a slight but troublesome wound in the arm, of which he had made nothing on coming home.  No wound could have been more opportune—­more friendly to the doctor’s craving for a daughter-in-law.  It kept the Captain at Beechcote, but it did not prevent him from coming over every Sunday to Tallyn to bring flowers or letters, or news from the village; and it was positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short flights.  Only here it was a tether self-imposed and of the heart.

There was no direct wooing, however, and for weeks their talk was all of Diana.  Then the Captain’s arm got well, and Nigeria called.  But Muriel would not have allowed him to say a word before departure had it not been for Diana—­and the doctor—­who were suddenly found to have entered, in regard to this matter, upon a league and covenant not to be resisted.  Whether the doctor opened Diana’s eyes need not