e brink of her
woman's destiny?

CHAPTER IV

The next day, when Diana looked out from her window, she saw a large and
dreary park wrapped in scudding rain which promised evil things for the
shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out
his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had
built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and
plantations were kept to a nicety; not a twig was out of place. Enormous
cost had been incurred in the planting of rare evergreens; full-grown
trees had been transplanted wholesale from a distance, and still wore in
many cases a sickly and invalided air; and elaborate contrasts in dark
and light foliage had been arranged by the landscape-gardener employed.
Dark plantations had a light border--light plantations a dark one. A
lake or large pond, with concrete banks and two artificial islands, held
the centre of the park, and on the monotonous stretches of immaculate
grass there were deer to be seen wherever anybody could reasonably
expect them.

Diana surveyed it all with a lively dislike. She pitied Lady Lucy and
Mr. Marsham because they must live in such a place. Especially, surely,
must it be hampering and disconcerting to a man, preaching the
democratic gospel, and looking forward to the democratic millennium, to
be burdened with a house and estate which could offer so few excuses for
the wealth of which they made an arrogant and uninviting display.
Immense possessions and lavish expenditure may be, as we all know, so
softened by antiquity, or so masked by taste, as not to jar with ideals
the most different or remote. But here "proputty! proputty!" was the cry
of every ugly wood and tasteless shrubbery, whereas the prospective
owner of them, according to his public utterances and career, was
magnificently careless of property--was, in fact, in the eyes of the
lovers of property, its enemy. The house again spoke loudly and
aggressively of money; yet it was the home of a champion of the poor.

Well--a man cannot help it, if his father has suffered from stupidity
and bad taste; and encumbrances of this kind are more easily created
than got rid of. No doubt Oliver Marsham's democratic opinions had been
partly bred in him by opposition and recoil. Diana seemed to get a good
deal of rather comforting light on the problem by looking at it from
this point of view.

Indeed, she thought over it persistently while she dressed.