“He lives near here.  I told him I was sure you’d ask him to something, if he called.”

“Who was he?”

With much rattling of the bangles on her wrists, Fanny produced a card from her hand-bag.  Diana looked at it in dismay.  It was the card of a young solicitor whom she had once met at a local tea-party, and decided to avoid thenceforward.

She said nothing, however, and plunged into inquiries as to her aunt and cousins.

“Oh! they’re all right.  Mother’s worried out of her life about money; but, then, we’ve always been that poor you couldn’t skin a cent off us, so that’s nothing new.”

Diana murmured sympathy.  She knew vaguely that her father had done a good deal to subsidize these relations.  She could only suppose that in his ignorance he had not done enough.

Meanwhile Fanny Merton had fixed her eyes upon Diana with a curious hostile look, almost a stare, which had entered them as she spoke of the family poverty, and persisted as they travelled from Diana’s face and figure to the pretty and spacious room beyond.  She examined everything, in a swift keen scrutiny, and then as the pouncing glance came back to her cousin, the girl suddenly exclaimed: 

“Goodness! but you are like Aunt Sparling!”

Diana flushed crimson.  She drew back and said, hurriedly, to Mrs. Colwood: 

“Muriel, would you see if they have taken the luggage up-stairs?”

Mrs. Colwood went at once.

Fanny Merton had herself changed color, and looked a little embarrassed.  She did not repeat her remark, but began to take her furs off, to smooth her hair deliberately, and settle her bracelets.  Diana came nearer to her as soon as they were alone.

“Do you really think I am like mamma?” she said, tremulously, all her eyes fixed upon her cousin.

“Well, of course I never saw her!” said Miss Merton, looking down at the fire.  “How could I?  But mother has a picture of her, and you’re as like as two peas.”

“I never saw any picture of mamma,” said Diana; “I don’t know at all what she was like.”

“Ah, well—­” said Miss Merton, still looking down.  Then she stopped, and said no more.  She took out her handkerchief, and began to rub a spot of mud off her dress.  It seemed to Diana that her manner was a little strange, and rather rude.  But she had made up her mind there would be peculiarities in Fanny, and she did not mean to be repelled by them.

“Shall I take you to your room?” she said.  “You must be tired, and we shall be dining directly.”

Miss Merton allowed herself to be led up-stairs, looking curiously round her at every step.

“I say, you must be well off!” she burst out, as they came to the head of the stairs, “or you’d never be able to run a place like this!”

“Papa left me all his money,” said Diana, coloring again.  “I hope he wouldn’t have thought it extravagant.”