lip seemed to say:

"There!--now we have come to it. This is my passion--my hobby--this is
_me_!"

"Her enemies! You are political?"

"Desperately!"

"A Tory?"

"Fanatical. But that's only part of it, 'What should they know of
England, that only England know!'"

Miss Mallory threw back her head with a gesture that became it.

"Ah, I see--an Imperialist?"

Diana nodded, smiling. She had seated herself in a chair by the
fireside. Her dog's head was on her knees, and one of her slender hands
rested on the black and tan. Mrs. Colwood admired the picture. Miss
Mallory's sloping shoulders and long waist were well shown by her simple
dress of black and closely fitting serge. Her head crowned and piled
with curly black hair, carried itself with an amazing self-possession
and pride, which was yet all feminine. This young woman might talk
politics, thought her new friend; no male man would call her prater,
while she bore herself with that air. Her eyes--the chaperon noticed it
for the first time--owed some of their remarkable intensity, no doubt,
to short sight. They were large, finely colored and thickly fringed, but
their slightly veiled concentration suggested an habitual, though quite
unconscious _struggle to see_--with that clearness which the mind behind
demanded of them. The complexion was a clear brunette, the cheeks rosy;
the nose was slightly tilted, the mouth fresh and beautiful though
large; and the face of a lovely oval. Altogether, an aspect of rich and
glowing youth: no perfect beauty; but something arresting,
ardent--charged, perhaps over-charged, with personality. Mrs. Colwood
said to herself that life at Beechcote would be no stagnant pool.

While they lingered in the drawing-room before church, she kept Diana
talking. It seemed that Miss Mallory had seen Egypt, India, and Canada,
in the course of her last two years of life with her father. Their
travels had spread over more than a year; and Diana had brought Mr.
Mallory back to the Riviera, only, it appeared, to die, after some eight
months of illness. But in securing to her that year of travel, her
father had bestowed his last and best gift upon her. Aided by his
affection, and stimulated by his knowledge, her mind and character had
rapidly developed. And, as through a natural outlet, all her starved
devotion for the England she had never known, had spent itself upon the
Englands she found beyond the seas; upon the hard-worked soldiers and
civilia