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And Diana had never said a word to her about it to her own cousin! Nasty, close, mean ways! Fanny was not good enough for Tallyn oh no! She was asked to Beechcote when there was nothing going on or next to nothing and one might yawn one's self to sleep with dulness from morning till night.
"Never mind any more roses," said Alicia. "We ought to get home." They drove toward Tallyn in silence. Alicia's startling hat of white muslin framed the red gold of her hair, and the brilliant color assisted here and there by rouge of her cheeks and lips. She said presently, in a sympathetic voice: "How sorry one is for her!" Marsham made no reply.
She was no longer the gracious and smiling hostess, as her familiar friends knew her, both at Tallyn and in London.
But she meant to be ignorant no longer. No more brooding and dreaming! It was pleasant to remember that Sir James Chide had taken a furnished house Lytchett Manor only a few miles from Beechcote, and that Mr. Ferrier was to be his guest there as soon as politics allowed. For her, Diana, that was well, for if he were at Tallyn they could have met but seldom if at all.
But never mind, Oliver is safely in, and as soon as the Government is formed, I will come to Tallyn, and we will laugh at these woes. I can't write at greater length now, for Broadstone has just summoned me. You will have seen that he went to Windsor this morning. Now the agony begins. Let's hope it may be decently short. I am just off for town. "Yours ever, John Ferrier."
It was during one of their early drives, in the canvassing of the first election, that he had lost his head one June afternoon, as they found themselves alone, crossing a beech wood on one of the private roads of the Tallyn estate; the groom having been despatched on a message to a farm-house.
Her manner threw a sudden light on certain features in her history: Marsham's continued dependence on his mother and inadequate allowance, the autocratic ability shown in the management of the Tallyn household and estates, management in which Marsham was allowed practically no share at all, and other traits and facts long known to him.
They passed into the darkness of overarching trees, and there, veiled from him in the green twilight, Alicia no longer checked the dancing triumph in her eyes. One Saturday in early August, some weeks after the incident described in the last chapter, Bobbie Forbes, in the worst inn's worst fly, such being the stress and famine of election time, drove up to the Tallyn front door.
Hand in hand, trembling still under the thrill of the moment which had fused their lives, they fell into happy discursive talk: of the Tallyn visit of her thoughts and his of what Lady Lucy and Mr. Ferrier had said, or would say.
Meanwhile he held his peace on the subject of some letters he had received that morning. There was to be an expedition in Nigeria. Officers were wanted; and he had volunteered. The result of his application was not yet known. He had no intention whatever of upsetting his parents till it was known. "I wonder how Miss Mallory liked Tallyn," said Mrs. Roughsedge, briskly.
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