nd new? Marsham felt himself already attacked by the poison of Toryism,
and Diana, with a happy start, envisaged horizons that her father never
knew, and questions where she had everything to learn.

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. In the midst of it the fall of temperature, which
came with the sunset, touched them, and Marsham sprang up with the
peremptoriness of a new relationship, insisting that he must take her
home out of the chilly dusk. As they stood lingering in the hollow,
unwilling to leave the gnarled thorns, the heather-carpet, and the glow
of western light--symbols to them henceforth that they too, in their
turn, amid the endless generations, had drunk the mystic cup, and shared
the sacred feast--Diana perceived some movement far below, on the open
space in front of Beechcote. A little peering through the twilight
showed them two horses with their riders leaving the Beechcote door.

"Oh! your cousin--and Sir James!" cried Diana, in distress, "and I
haven't said good-bye--"

"You will see them soon again. And I shall carry them the news
to-night."

"Will you? Shall I allow it?"

Marsham laughed; he caught her hand again, slipped it possessively
within his left arm, and held it there as they went slowly down the
path. Diana could not think with any zest of Alicia and her reception of
the news. A succession of trifles had shown her quite clearly that
Alicia was not her friend; why, she did not know. She remembered many
small advances on her own part.

But at the mention of Sir James Chide, her face lit up.

"He has been so kind to me!" she said, looking up into Marsham's
face--"so very kind!"

Her eyes showed a touch of passion; the passion that some natures can
throw into gratitude; whether for little or much. Marsham smiled.

"He fell in love with you! Yes--he is a dear old boy. One can well
imagine that he has had a romance!"

"Has he?"

"It is always said that he was in love with a woman whom he defended on
a charge of murder."

Diana exclaimed.

"He had met her when they were both very young, and lost his heart to
her. Then she married and he lost sight of her. He accepted a brief in
this murder case, ten years later, not knowing her identity, and they
met for the first time when he went to s