The voice was determined.  Muriel Colwood—­startled and dismayed—­surveyed the speaker.  She had been waylaid on the threshold of her room.  The morning was half-way through.  Visitors, including Mr. Fred Birch, were expected to lunch, and Miss Merton, who had been lately invisible, had already, she saw, changed her dress.  At breakfast, it seemed to Mrs. Colwood, she had been barely presentable:  untidy hair, a dress with various hooks missing, and ruffles much in need of washing.  Muriel could only suppose that the carelessness of her attire was meant to mark the completeness of her conquest of Beechcote.  But now her gown of scarlet velveteen, her arms bare to the elbow, her frizzled and curled hair, the powder which gave a bluish white to her complexion, the bangles and beads which adorned her, showed her armed to the last pin for the encounters of the luncheon-table.

Mrs. Colwood, however, after a first dazzled look at what she wore, thought only of what she said.  She hurriedly drew the girl into her own room, and shut the door.  When, after some conversation, Fanny emerged, Mrs. Colwood was left in a state of agitation that was partly fear, partly helpless indignation.  During the fortnight since Miss Merton’s arrival all the energies of the house had been devoted to her amusement.  A little whirlwind of dissipation had blown through the days.  Two meets, a hockey-match, a concert at the neighboring town, a dinner-party and various “drums,” besides a luncheon-party and afternoon tea at Beechcote itself in honor of the guest—­Mrs. Colwood thought the girl might have been content!  But she had examined everything presented to her with a very critical eye, and all through it had been plain that she was impatient and dissatisfied; for, inevitably, her social success was not great.  Diana, on the other hand, was still a new sensation, and something of a queen wherever she went.  Her welcoming eyes, her impetuous smile drew a natural homage; and Fanny followed sulkily in her wake, accepted—­not without surprise—­as Miss Mallory’s kinswoman, but distinguished by no special attentions.

In any case, she would have rebelled against the situation.  Her vanity was amazing, her temper violent.  At home she had been treated as a beauty, and had ruled the family with a firm view to her own interests.  What in Alicia Drake was disguised by a thousand subleties of class and training was here seen in its crudest form.  But there was more besides—­miserably plain now to this trembling spectator.  The resentment of Diana’s place in life, as of something robbed, not earned—­the scarcely concealed claim either to share it or attack it—­these things were no longer riddles to Muriel Colwood.  Rather they were the storm-signs of a coming tempest, already darkening above an innocent head.