hurriedly--"I have done it. And, please, I would
rather it were now all forgotten. Nobody else need know, need they, that
he proposed?"

She stroked her friend's hand piteously. Mrs. Roughsedge, foreseeing the
storm of gossip that would be sweeping in a day or two through the
village and the neighborhood, could not command herself to speak. Her
questions--her indignation--choked her. At the end of the conversation,
when Diana had described such plans as she had, and the elder lady rose
to go, she said, faltering:

"May Hugh come and say good-bye?"

Diana shrank a moment, and then assented. Mrs. Roughsedge folded the
girl to her heart, and fairly broke down. Diana comforted her; but it
seemed as if her own tears were now dry. When they were parting, she
called her friend back a moment.

"I think," she said, steadily, "it would be best now that everybody here
should know what my name was, and who I am. Will you tell the Vicar, and
anybody else you think of? I shall come back to live here. I know
everybody will be kind--" Her voice died away.

The March sun had set and the lamps were lit when Hugh Roughsedge
entered the drawing-room where Diana sat writing letters, paying bills,
absorbing herself in all the details of departure. The meeting between
them was short. Diana was embarrassed, above all, by the tumult of
suppressed feeling she divined in Roughsedge. For the first time she
must perforce recognize what hitherto she had preferred not to see: what
now she was determined not to know. The young soldier, on his side, was
stifled by his own emotions--wrath--contempt--pity; and by a maddening
desire to wrap this pale stricken creature in his arms, and so protect
her from an abominable world. But something told him--to his
despair--that she had been in Marsham's arms; had given her heart
irrevocably; and that, Marsham's wife or no, all was done and over for
him, Hugh Roughsedge.

Yet surely in time--in time! That was the inner clamor of the mind, as
he bid her good-bye, after twenty minutes' disjointed talk, in which,
finally, neither dared to go beyond commonplace. Only at the last, as he
held her hand, he asked her:

"I may write to you from Nigeria?"

Rather shyly, she assented; adding, with a smile:

"But I am a bad letter-writer!"

"You are an angel!" he said, hoarsely, lifted her hand, kissed it, and
rushed away.

She was shaken by the scene, and had hardly composed herself again to a
weary grappling