He paused, smiling.

“It will shed him some day?”

“It must!”

“And where will Mr. Marsham be then?”

“On the winning side—­I think.”

The tone was innocent and careless; but the words offended her.

She drew herself up a little.

“He would never betray his friends!”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Frobisher, hastily; “I didn’t mean that.  But
Marsham has a mind more open, more elastic, more modern than
Ferrier—­great man as he is.”

Diana was silent.  She seemed still to hear some of the phrases and inflections of Mr. Ferrier’s talk of the afternoon.  Mr. Frobisher’s prophecy wounded some new-born sympathy in her.  She turned the conversation.

With Oliver Marsham she talked when she could, as Lady Niton allowed her.  She succeeded, at least, in learning something more of her right-hand neighbor and of Miss Vincent.  Mr. Frobisher, it appeared, was a Fellow of Magdalen, and was at present lodging in Limehouse, near the docks, studying poverty and Trade-unionism, and living upon a pound a week.  As for Miss Vincent, in her capacity of secretary to a well-known Radical member of Parliament, she had been employed, for his benefit, in gathering information first-hand, very often in the same fields where Mr. Frobisher was at work.  This brought them often together—­and they were the best of comrades, and allies.

Diana’s eyes betrayed her curiosity; she seemed to be asking for clews in a strange world.  Marsham apparently felt that nothing could be more agreeable than to guide her.  He began to describe for her the life of such a woman of the people as Marion Vincent.  An orphan at fourteen, earning her own living from the first; self-dependent, self-protected; the friend, on perfectly equal terms, of a group of able men, interested in the same social ideals as herself; living alone, in contempt of all ordinary conventions, now in Kensington or Belgravia, and now in a back street of Stepney, or Poplar, and equally at home and her own mistress in both; exacting from a rich employer the full market value of the services she rendered him, and refusing to accept the smallest gift or favor beyond; a convinced Socialist and champion of the poor, who had within the past twelve months, to Marsham’s knowledge, refused an offer of marriage from a man of large income, passionately devoted to her, whom she liked—­mainly, it was believed, because his wealth was based on sweated labor:  such was the character sketched by Marsham for his neighbor in the intermittent conversation, which was all that Lady Niton allowed him.