Suddenly Diana, who had just opened a hitherto unread letter, exclaimed: 

“Oh, but how delightful!”

Mrs. Colwood looked up; Diana’s aspect was one of sparkling pleasure and surprise.

“One of my Barbadoes’ cousins is here—­in London—­actually in London—­and I knew nothing of her coming.  She writes to me.—­Of course she must come to Beechcote—­she must come at once!”

She sprang up, and went to a writing-table near, to look for a telegraph form.  She wrote a message with eagerness, despatched it, and then explained as coherently as her evident emotion and excitement would allow.

“They are my only relations in the world—­that I know of—­that papa ever spoke to me about.  Mamma’s sister married Mr. Merton.  He was a planter in Barbadoes.  He died about three years ago, but his widow and daughters have lived on there.  They were very poor and couldn’t afford to come home.  Fanny is the eldest—­I think she must be about twenty.”

Diana paced up and down, with her hands behind her, wondering when her telegram would reach her cousin, who was staying at a London boarding-house, when she might be expected at Beechcote, how long she could be persuaded to stay—­speculations, in fact, innumerable.  Her agitation was pathetic in Mrs. Colwood’s eyes.  It testified to the girl’s secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance.

Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her cousins.

“Oh, some years!” said Diana, vaguely.  “I remember a letter coming—­before we went to the East—­and papa reading it.  I know”—­she hesitated—­“I know he didn’t like Mr. Merton.”

She stood still a moment, thinking.  The lights and shadows of reviving memory crossed her face, and presently her thought emerged, with very little hint to her companion of the course it had been taking out of sight.

“Papa always thought it a horrid life for them—­Aunt Merton and the girls—­especially after they gave up their estate and came to live in the town.  But how could they help it?  They must have been very poor.  Fanny”—­she took up the letter—­“Fanny says she has come home to learn music and French—­that she may earn money by teaching when she goes back.  She doesn’t write very well, does she?”

She held out the sheet.

The handwriting, indeed, was remarkably illiterate, and Mrs. Colwood could only say that probably a girl of Miss Merton’s circumstances had had few advantages.

“But then, you see, we’ll give her advantages!” cried Diana, throwing herself down at Mrs. Colwood’s feet, and beginning to plan aloud.—­“You know if she will only stay with us, we can easily have people down from London for lessons.  And she can have the green bedroom—­over the dining-room—­can’t she?—­and the library to practise in.  It would be absurd that she should stay in London, at a horrid boarding-house, when there’s Beechcote, wouldn’t it?”