“Well, I dare say he didn’t.  But that doesn’t make any difference.”

“Was that what he and Uncle Merton quarrelled about?”

Fanny hesitated again; then broke out:  “Father only did what he ought—­he asked for what was owed mother!”

“And papa wouldn’t give it!” cried Diana, in a strange note of scorn; “papa, who never could rest if he owed a farthing to anybody—­who always overpaid everybody—­whom everybody—­”

[Illustration:  “YOU NEEDN’T BE CROSS WITH ME, DIANA”]

She rose suddenly with a bitten lip.  Her eyes blazed—­and her cheeks.  She walked to the window and stood looking out, in a whirlwind of feeling and memory, hiding her face as best she could from the girl who sat watching her with an expression half sulky, half insolent.  Diana was thinking of moments—­recalling forgotten fragments of dialogue—­in the past, which showed her father’s opinion of his Barbadoes brother-in-law:  “A grasping, ill-bred fellow”—­“neither gratitude, nor delicacy”—­“has been the evil genius of his wife, and will be the ruin of his children.”  She did not believe a word of Fanny’s story—­not a word of it!

She turned impetuously.  Then, as her eyes met Fanny’s, a shock ran through her—­the same sudden, inexplicable fear which had seized on Mrs. Colwood, only more sickening, more paralyzing.  And it was a fear which ran back to and linked itself with the hour of heart-searching in the wood.  What was Fanny thinking of?—­what was in her mind—­on her lips?  Impulses she could not have defined, terrors to which she could give no name, crept over Diana’s will and disabled it.  She trembled from head to foot—­and gave way.

She walked up to her cousin.

“Fanny, is there any letter—­anything of grandpapa’s—­or of my mother’s—­that you could show me?”

“No!  It was a promise, I tell you—­there was no writing.  But my mother could swear to it.”

The girl faced her cousin without flinching.  Diana sat down again, white and tremulous, the moment of energy, of resistance, gone.  In a wavering voice she began to explain that she had, in fact, been inquiring into her affairs, that the money was not actually at her disposal, that to provide it would require an arrangement with her bankers, and the depositing of some securities; but that, before long, it should be available.

Fanny drew a long breath.  She had not expected the surrender.  Her eyes sparkled, and she began to stammer thanks.

“Don’t!” said Diana, putting out a hand.  “If I owe it you—­and I take it on your word—­the money shall be paid—­that’s all.  Only—­only, I wish you had not written to me like that; and I ask that—­that—­you will never, please, speak to me about it again!”

She had risen, and was standing, very tall and rigid, her hands pressing against each other.

Fanny’s face clouded.

“Very well,” she said, as she rose from her seat, “I’m sure I don’t want to talk about it.  I didn’t like the job a bit—­nor did mother.  But if you are poor—­and somebody owes you something—­you can’t help trying to get it—­that’s all!”