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No; she would make Lady Glencora understand that the close intimacies of daily life were not possible to them! "I declare I'm very much ashamed," said Lady Glencora, as she entered the room. "I shan't apologize to you, Alice, for it was you who kept me talking; but I do beg Mrs Marsham's pardon."
"I want you all all to myself." And in the shadow of the yew he put his arms round her again, and their hearts beat together. But our nature moves within its own inexorable limits. In Diana, Marsham's touch, Marsham's embrace awakened that strange mingled happiness, that happiness reared and based on tragedy, which the pure and sensitive feel in the crowning moments of life.
But Lucy Marsham's son! that defection, realized or threatened, was beginning now to hit him hard. Amid all their disagreements of the past year his pride had always refused to believe that Marsham could ultimately make common cause with the party dissenters. Ferrier had hardly been able to bring himself, indeed, to take the disagreements seriously.
Marsham's meetings improved, the Herald article was apparently forgotten. The anxiety now lay chiefly in the mining villages, where nothing seemed to affect the hostile attitude of the inhabitants.
All through she seemed to have been clinging to Marsham's supporting hand as to the clew which might when nature had had its way lead her back out of this labyrinth of pain. But surely he would let her sorrow awhile! would sorrow with her. Under the strange coldness and brevity of his letter, she felt like the children in the market-place of old "We have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept."
With a prophetic insight which seldom failed him, he saw that Marsham's chapter of success was closed. He might get some small office out of the Government. Nevertheless, the scale of life had dropped on the wrong side. Through Lankester's thought there shot a pang of sympathy. Defeat was always more winning to him than triumph. Meanwhile the new member himself was in no melting mood.
And yet and yet! was it in that very moment that feeling on the man's side "o'erleaped itself, and fell on the other"? When they resumed conversation, Marsham's tacit expectation was that Diana would now show herself comforted; that, sure of him and of his affection, she would now be ready to put the tragic past aside; to think first and foremost of her own present life and his, and face the future cheerfully.
It showed itself rapidly in the case of Marsham and Diana; for their moment of high feeling was no sooner over, and she sitting quietly again, her hand in his, the blinding tears dashed away, than Marsham's mind flew inevitably to his own great sacrifice.
Love is tortured by its own intensity; and the thought of death strikes through the experience which means the life of the race. As her lips felt Marsham's kiss, she knew, as generations of women have known before her, that life could give her no more; and she also knew that it was transiency and parting that made it so intolerably sweet. "Till death us do part," she said to herself.
The letters of that morning had brought him news of an important meeting in Marsham's constituency, in which his leadership had been for the first time openly and vehemently attacked. Marsham had not been present at the meeting, and Lady Lucy had written, eagerly declaring that he could not have prevented it and had no responsibility.
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