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Updated: June 16, 2025
Colwood, was hovering about her cousin. She and Miss Merton had kissed each other in the hall, and then Diana, seized with a sudden shyness, led her guest into the drawing-room and stood there speechless, a little; holding her by both hands and gazing at her; mastered by feeling and excitement. "Well, you have got a queer old place!" said Fanny Merton, withdrawing herself.
If he did come might they not press hands? look into each other's eyes? just once, once more? An hour later the home was in a bustle of packing and housekeeping arrangements. Muriel Colwood, with a small set face and lips, and eyes that would this time have scorned to cry, was writing notes and giving directions. Meanwhile, Diana had written to Mrs.
Marsham giving the last directions for the day to the head keeper. The voice was sharp and peremptory too peremptory, one might have thought, for democracy addressing a brother. But the keeper, a gray-haired, weather-beaten man of fifty, bowed himself out respectfully, and Marsham turned to greet Diana. Mrs. Colwood saw the kindling of his eyes as they fell on the girl's morning freshness.
Colwood recalled the morning Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table, and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast, partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run," on board the steamer.
The old walls glowed afresh under her hand, and from the combination of their antique beauty with her young taste, a home began to emerge, stamped with a woman's character and reflecting her enthusiasms. As she assisted in the task, Mrs. Colwood learned many things.
Colwood found herself helping to carry a small but heavy box of papers to the sitting-room which Diana had arranged for herself next to her bedroom. Mrs. Colwood noticed that before Diana asked her assistance she dismissed her new maid, who had been till then actively engaged in the unpacking. Miss Mallory herself unlocked the trunk in which the despatch-box had arrived, and took it out.
It testified to the girl's secret sense of forlornness, to her natural hunger for the ties and relationships other girls possessed in such abundance. Mrs. Colwood inquired if it was long since she had had news of her cousins. "Oh, some years!" said Diana, vaguely. "I remember a letter coming before we went to the East and papa reading it. I know" she hesitated "I know he didn't like Mr. Merton."
Colwood lived a very quiet life, and were never to be seen at the tea and garden parties in which the neighborhood abounded. "Plucky of her to come back here!" said Bobbie. "And how's Lady Lucy?" Lady Niton moved impatiently. "Lucy would be all right if her son wouldn't join a set of traitors in jockeying the man who put him into Parliament, and has been Lucy's quasi-husband for twenty years!"
If it hurts, Oliver will help me." But she had been brought up in a school of reticence, and her loyalty to her father and mother sealed her lips. That anxiety, that burden, nobody must share with her but Oliver and perhaps his mother; his mother, so soon to be hers. Muriel Colwood, watching her face, could hardly restrain herself.
Her solitary bringing-up had made her liable to fits of shyness amid her general expansiveness, and it was a relief to meet no one least of all, Alicia Drake on her way down-stairs. Mrs. Colwood, indeed, was waiting for her at the end of the passage, and Diana held her hand a little as they descended. A male voice was speaking in the hall Mr.
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