"Oh, that doesn't matter!--not at the Marshams. I am glad!" repeated Diana, fondling the book--"If I really had lost it, it would have given him a horrid advantage!"

"Who is Mr. Marsham?"

"A gentleman we got to know at Rapallo," said Diana, still smiling to herself. "He and his mother were there last winter. Father and I quarrelled with him all day long. He is the worst Radical I ever met, but--"

"But?--but agreeable?"

"Oh yes," said Diana, uncertainly, and Mrs. Colwood thought she colored--"oh yes--agreeable!"

"And he lives near here?"

"He is the member for the division. Such a crew as we shall meet there!" Diana laughed out. "I had better warn you. But they have been very kind. They called directly they knew I had taken the house. 'They' means Mr. Oliver Marsham and his mother. I am glad I've found his book!" She went off embracing it.

Mrs. Colwood was left with two impressions--one sharp, the other vague. One was that Mr. Oliver Marsham might easily become a personage in the story of which she had just, as it were, turned the first leaf. The other was connected with the name on the despatch-box. Why did it haunt her? It had produced a kind of indistinguishable echo in the brain, to which she could put no words--which was none the less dreary; like a voice of wailing from a far-off past.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

 

During the days immediately following her arrival at Beechcote, Mrs. Colwood applied herself to a study of Miss Mallory and her surroundings--none the less penetrating because the student was modest and her method unperceived. She divined a nature unworldly, impulsive, steeped, moreover, for all its spiritual and intellectual force, which was considerable, in a kind of sensuous romance--much connected with concrete things and symbols, places, persons, emblems, or relics, any contact with which might at any time bring the color to the girl's cheeks and the tears to her eyes. 

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