ld not disentangle itself from the load which
had been flung upon it--could not recover its healthiness of action amid
the phantom sights and sounds which beset imagination. Again and again
she must ask him for details--and shrink from the answers; must hide her
eyes with the little moan that wrung his heart; and break out in
ejaculations, as though of bewilderment, under a revelation so singular
and so terrible.

It was to be expected, of course; he could only hope it would soon pass.
Secretly, after a time, he was repelled and wearied. He answered her
with the same tender words, he tried to be all kindness; but more
perfunctorily. The oneness of that supreme moment vanished and did
not return.

Meanwhile, Diana's perceptions, stunned by the one overmastering
thought, gave her no warning. And, in truth, if Marsham could have
understood, the process of mental recovery was set going in her by just
this freedom of utterance to the man she loved--these words and looks
and tears--that brought ease after the dumb horror of the first hours.

At last he made an effort, hiding the nascent impatience in a caress.

"If I could only persuade you not to dwell upon it too persistently--to
put it from your thoughts as soon and as much as you can! Dear, we shall
have our own anxieties!"

She looked up with a sudden start.

"My mother," he said, reluctantly, "may give us trouble."

The color rushed into Diana's cheeks, and ebbed with equal suddenness.

"Lady Lucy! Oh!--how could I forget? Oliver!--she thinks--I am not fit!"

And in her eyes he saw for the first time the self-abasement he had
dreaded, yet perhaps expected, to see there before. For in her first
question to him there had been no real doubt of him; it had been the
natural humility of wounded love that cries out, expecting the reply
that no power on earth could check itself from giving were the
case reversed.

"Dearest! you know my mother's bringing up: her Quaker training, and her
rather stern ideas. We shall persuade her--in time."

"In time? And now--she--she forbids it?"

Her voice faltered. And yet, unconsciously, she had drawn herself a
little together and away.

Marsham began to give a somewhat confused and yet guarded account of his
mother's state of mind, endeavoring to prepare her for the letter which
might arrive on the morrow. He got up and moved about the room as he
spoke, while Diana sat, looking at him, her lips trembling from time to
time. Pr