papers into the drawing-room.  Further information had been received from the Afghan frontier.  The English loss in the engagement already reported was greater than had been at first supposed; and Diana found the name of an officer she had known in India among the dead.  As she pondered the telegram, the tears in her eyes, she heard Mrs. Fotheringham describe the news as “on the whole very satisfactory.”  The nation required the lesson.  Whereupon Diana’s tongue was loosed and would not be quieted.  She dwelt hotly on the “sniping,” the treacheries, the midnight murders which had preceded the expedition, Mrs. Fotheringham listened to her with flashing looks, and suddenly she broke into a denunciation of war, the military spirit, and the ignorant and unscrupulous persons at home, especially women, who aid and abet politicians in violence and iniquity, the passion of which soon struck Diana dumb.  Here was no honorable fight of equal minds.  She was being punished for her advocacy of the night before, by an older woman of tyrannical temper, toward whom she stood in the relation of guest to host.  It was in vain to look round for defenders.  The only man present was Mr. Barton, who sat listening with ill-concealed smiles to what was going on, without taking part in it.

Diana extricated herself with as much dignity as she could muster, but she was too young to take the matter philosophically.  She went up-stairs burning with anger, the tears of hurt feeling in her eyes.  It seemed to her that Mrs. Fotheringham’s attack implied a personal dislike; Mr. Marsham’s sister had been glad to “take it out of her.”  To this young cherished creature it was almost her first experience of the kind.

On the way up-stairs she paused to look wistfully out of a staircase window.  Still raining—­alack!  She thought with longing of the open fields, and the shooters.  Was there to be no escape all day from the ugly oppressive house, and some of its inmates?  Half shyly, yet with a quickening of the heart, she remembered Marsham’s farewell to her of that morning, his look of the night before.  Intellectually, she was comparatively mature; in other respects, as inexperienced and impressionable as any convent girl.

“I fear luncheon is impossible!” said Lady Lucy’s voice.

Diana looked up and saw her descending the stairs.

“Such a pity!  Oliver will be so disappointed.”

She paused beside her guest—­an attractive and distinguished figure.  On her white hair she wore a lace cap which was tied very precisely under her delicate chin.  Her dress, of black satin, was made in a full plain fashion of her own; she had long since ceased to allow her dressmaker any voice in it; and her still beautiful hands flashed with diamonds, not however in any vulgar profusion.  Lady Lucy’s mother had been of a Quaker family, and though Quakerism in her had been deeply alloyed with other metals, the moral and intellectual self-dependence of Quakerism, its fastidious reserves and discrimination were very strong in her.  Discrimination indeed was the note of her being.  For every Christian, some Christian precepts are obsolete.  For Lady Lucy that which runs—­“Judge Not!”—­had never been alive.