CHAPTER IX

Shows how A position of delicacy for A lady and gentleman was met in simple fashion without hurt to either

Redworth’s impulse was to laugh for very gladness of heart, as he proffered excuses for his tremendous alarums and in doing so, the worthy gentleman imagined he must have persisted in clamouring for admission because he suspected, that if at home, she would require a violent summons to betray herself.  It was necessary to him to follow his abashed sagacity up to the mark of his happy animation.

‘Had I known it was you!’ said Diana, bidding him enter the passage.  She wore a black silk mantilla and was warmly covered.

She called to her maid Danvers, whom Redworth remembered:  a firm woman of about forty, wrapped, like her mistress, in head-covering, cloak, scarf and shawl.  Telling her to scour the kitchen for firewood, Diana led into a sitting-room.  ‘I need not ask—­you have come from Lady Dunstane,’ she said.  ‘Is she well?’

‘She is deeply anxious.’

’You are cold.  Empty houses are colder than out of doors.  You shall soon have a fire.’

She begged him to be seated.

The small glow of candle-light made her dark rich colouring orange in shadow.

‘House and grounds are open to a tenant,’ she resumed.  ’I say good-bye to them to-morrow morning.  The old couple who are in charge sleep in the village to-night.  I did not want them here.  You have quitted the Government service, I think?’

‘A year or so since.’

‘When did you return from America?’

‘Two days back.’

‘And paid your visit to Copsley immediately?’

‘As early as I could.’

‘That was true friendliness.  You have a letter for me?’

‘I have.’

He put his hand to his pocket for the letter.

‘Presently,’ she said.  She divined the contents, and nursed her resolution to withstand them.  Danvers had brought firewood and coal.  Orders were given to her, and in spite of the opposition of the maid and intervention of the gentleman, Diana knelt at the grate, observing: 

‘Allow me to do this.  I can lay and light a fire.’

He was obliged to look on:  she was a woman who spoke her meaning.  She knelt, handling paper, firewood and matches, like a housemaid.  Danvers proceeded on her mission, and Redworth eyed Diana in the first fire-glow.  He could have imagined a Madonna on an old black Spanish canvas.

The act of service was beautiful in gracefulness, and her simplicity in doing the work touched it spiritually.  He thought, as she knelt there, that never had he seen how lovely and how charged with mystery her features were; the dark large eyes full on the brows; the proud line of a straight nose in right measure to the bow of the lips; reposeful red lips, shut, and their curve of the slumber-smile at the corners.  Her forehead was broad; the chin of a sufficient firmness to sustain:  that noble square; the brows marked by a soft thick brush to the temples; her black hair plainly drawn along her head to the knot, revealed by the mantilla fallen on her neck.