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He was expected early, would take in Beechcote, indeed, on his way from the train to Lytchett. Who else should advise her if not he? In a hundred ways, practical and tender, he had made her understand that, for her mother's sake and her own, she was to him as a daughter. She mentioned him to Fanny. "Of course" she hurried over the words "we need only say that you have been engaged.
The young soldier had walked up to Beechcote immediately after luncheon, finding it impossible to restrain his impatience longer. Diana had not expected him so soon, and had slipped out for her daily half-hour with Betty Dyson, who had had a slight stroke, and was failing fast. So that Mrs. Colwood was at Roughsedge's discretion.
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.
A little peering through the twilight showed them two horses with their riders leaving the Beechcote door. "Oh! your cousin and Sir James!" cried Diana, in distress, "and I haven't said good-bye " "You will see them soon again. And I shall carry them the news to-night." "Will you? Shall I allow it?"
And those of us that might lead a decent life on this ill-arranged planet are all crippled and hamstrung by what we call unselfishness." The doctor vigorously replenished his pipe. "I vow I will go to Greece next spring, and leave Patricia behind!" Meanwhile, Mrs. Roughsedge walked to Beechcote in meditation. The facts she pondered were these, to put them as shortly as possible.
He could not bring himself to do it. It was as though Ferrier, lying still and cold at Lytchett, would know of it as though the act would do some roughness to the dead. He went into his sitting-room, found an empty drawer in his writing-table, thrust in the newspaper, and closed the drawer. "I regard this second appeal to West Brookshire as an insult!" said the Vicar of Beechcote, hotly. "If Mr.
Sir James was left perplexed, cudgelling his brains as to what to attempt next. It was Marsham, however, who broke the silence. With his dimmed sight he looked, at last, intently, at his companion. "Is is Miss Mallory still at Beechcote?" Sir James moved involuntarily. "Yes, certainly." "You see a great deal of her?"
"Run for help! brandy! a doctor! I'll stay with him. Run!" Diana ran. She met Mrs. Colwood hurrying, and sent her for brandy. She herself sped on blindly toward the village. A few yards beyond the Beechcote gate she was overtaken by a carriage. There was an exclamation, the carriage pulled up sharp, and a man leaped from it. "Miss Mallory! what is the matter?"
The tenant of Beechcote was, ipso facto, of some social importance, and Diana was reported to be rich; the Roughsedges also, though negligible financially, were not without influence in high places; and the doctor was governor of an important grammar-school recently revived and reorganized, wherewith the Birches would have been glad to be officially connected. He therefore made himself agreeable.
Ferrier, after spending a moment of quiet scrutiny on the young mistress of Beechcote, came to sit beside her. Mrs. Fotheringham threw herself back in her chair with a little yawn. "Mamma is more difficult than the Almighty!" she said, in a loud aside to Sir James Chide. "One sin or even somebody else's sin and you are done for."
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