But was she really in love?  “Why then so pale, fond lover?” He found a kind of angry comfort in the remembrance of her drooping looks.  They were no credit to Marsham, anyway.

Meanwhile Diana walked home, lingering by the way in two or three cottages.  She was shyly beginning to make friends with the people.  An old road-mender kept her listening while he told her how a Tallyn keeper had peppered him in the eye, ten years before, as he was crossing Barrow Common at dusk.  One eye had been taken out, and the other was almost useless; there he sat, blind, and cheerfully telling the tale—­“Muster Marsham—­Muster Henry Marsham—­had been verra kind—­ten shillin’ a week, and an odd job now and then.  I do suffer terr’ble, miss, at times—­but ther’s noa good in grumblin’—­is there?”

Next door, in a straggling line of cottages, she found a gentle, chattering widow whose husband had been drowned in the brew-house at Beechcote twenty years before, drowned in the big vat!—­before any one had heard a cry or a sound.  The widow was proud of so exceptional a tragedy; eager to tell the tale.  How had she lived since?  Oh, a bit here and a bit there.  And, of late, half a crown from the parish.

Last of all, in a cottage midway between the village and Beechcote, she paused to see a jolly middle-aged woman, with a humorous eye and a stream of conversation—­held prisoner by an incurable disease.  She was absolutely alone in the world.  Nobody knew what she had to live on.  But she could always find a crust for some one more destitute than herself, and she ranked high among the wits of the village.  To Diana she talked of her predecessors—­the Vavasours—­whose feudal presence seemed to be still brooding over the village.  With little chuckles of laughter, she gave instance after instance of the tyranny with which they had lorded it over the country-side in early Victorian days:  how the “Madam Vavasour” of those days had pulled the feathers from the village-girls’ hats, and turned a family who had offended her, with all their belongings, out into the village street.  But when Diana rejoiced that such days were done, the old woman gave a tolerant:  “Noa—­noa!  They were none so bad—­were t’ Vavasours.  Only they war no good at heirin.”

“Airing?” said Diana, mystified.

“Heirin,” repeated Betty Dyson, emphatically.  “Theer was old Squire Henry—­wi’ noabody to follow ‘im—­an’ Mr. Edward noa better—­and now thissun, wi nobbut lasses.  Noa—­they war noa good at heirin—­moor’s t’ pity.”  Then she looked slyly at her companion:  “An’ yo’, miss? yo’ll be gettin’ married one o’ these days, I’ll uphowd yer.”

Diana colored and laughed.

“Ay,” said the old woman, laughing too, with the merriment of a girl.  “Sweethearts is noa good—­but you mun ha’ a sweetheart!”

Diana fled, pursued by Betty’s raillery, and then by the thought of this lonely laughing woman, often tormented by pain, standing on the brink of ugly death, and yet turning back to look with this merry indulgent eye upon the past; and on this dingy old world, in which she had played so ragged and limping a part.  Yet clearly she would play it again if she could—­so sweet is mere life!—­and so hard to silence in the breast.