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And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in. He showed himself possessed of a sharper and more caustic tongue than Diana had yet suspected. His sister's sallies only amused him, and sometimes he improved on them, with epithets or comments, shrewder than hers indeed, but quite as biting. "His neighbors and constituents!" thought Diana, in a young astonishment.
He watched her now as closely as Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott had watched her before; and she always knew that he was doing so. She made the matter worse by continually proposing to do things which she knew he would not permit, in order that she might enjoy the fun of seeing his agony and amazement. But this, though it was fun to her at the moment, produced anything but fun, as its general result.
He could visualize the scene on the floor of the Exchange, the frenzy of men smitten with sudden fear, and the deliberate cold-blooded action of others who lent their weight to this downfall. Marsham was very busy. Greater grew the flood, with sales of so great quantities of stock that they perceived the market was going boldly short.
Diana told her story, her slender fingers quivering in the large motherly hand whose grasp soothed her, her eyes avoiding the tender dismay and pity writ large on the old face beside her; and at the end she said, with an effort: "Perhaps you have all expected me to be engaged to Mr. Marsham. He did propose to me but I have refused him."
"Had he not something to do with your election?" said Diana, astonished. "My election?" cried Marsham. Then he laughed. "I suppose he has been drawing the long bow, as usual. Am I impertinent? or may I ask, how you came to know him?" He looked at her smiling. Diana colored. "My cousin Fanny made acquaintance with him in the train." "I see. Here are our two cousins coming to meet us.
At this Barton roused. "What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run straight! as the party wants him to run." "All right. Ad leones! Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I don't know what Marsham will say to it."
"I did not think anything of the kind," he said, returning to the fire and looking down upon her; "simply because I know you too well." Alicia reddened a little. It was one of her attractions that she flushed so easily. "Because you know me too well?" she repeated. "Let me see. That means that you don't believe my turn will ever come?" Marsham smiled. "Your turn for what?" he said, dryly.
"Is Miss Vavasor going to walk home?" she asked. "Walk home; all along Oxford Street! Good gracious! no. Why should she walk? The carriage will take her." "Or a cab," said Alice. "I am quite used to go about London in a cab by myself." "I don't think they are nice for young ladies after dark," said Mrs Marsham. "I was going to offer my servant to walk with her.
She looked at the pencilled address, with quivering lips; then she opened the envelope, and on the back of the closely written letter she saw at once Ferrier's last words to her. Marsham, moved by a son's natural impulse, stooped and kissed her hair. He drew a chair forward, and she sank into it with the letter.
Now, just at this moment, Wimperley nodded energetically and laughed outright, whereupon a man whose name was Marsham, who sat at an adjoining table, turned for Wimperley did not often laugh and saw Birch's long finger resting on the melon, and, since Marsham was, without the knowledge of the others, one of the largest operators, in Consolidated stock, that stock took a further jump just half an hour later, and all through Pennsylvania there were farmers, mechanics, country doctors and storekeepers who read the news and rejoiced exceedingly thereat.
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