and looked into her face.

"You didn't say anything about _that_, Patricia, I'll be bound!"

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Diana was wandering about the Beechcote garden, with her
hands full of roses, just gathered. The garden glowed under the
westering sun. In the field just below it the silvery lines of new-cut
hay lay hot and fragrant in the quivering light. The woods on the
hill-side were at the richest moment of their new life, the earth-forces
swelling and rioting through every root and branch, wild roses climbing
every hedge--the miracle of summer at its height.

Diana sat down upon a grass-bank, to look and dream. The flowers
dropped beside her; she propped her face on her hands.

The home-coming had been hard. And perhaps the element in it she had
felt most difficult to bear had been the universal sympathy with which
she had been greeted. It spoke from the faces of the poor--the men and
women, the lads and girls of the village; with their looks of curiosity,
sometimes frank, sometimes furtive or embarrassed. It was more politely
disguised in the manners and tones of the gentle people; but everywhere
it was evident; and sometimes it was beyond her endurance.

She could not help imagining the talk about her in her absence; the
discussion of the case in the country-houses or in the village. To the
village people, unused to the fine discussions which turn on motive and
environment, and slow to revise an old opinion, she was just the
daughter--

She covered her eyes--one hideous word ringing brutally, involuntarily,
through her brain. By a kind of miserable obsession the talk in the
village public-houses shaped itself in her mind. "Ay, they didn't hang
her because she was a lady. She got off, trust her! But if it had been
you or me--"

She rose, trembling, trying to shake off the horror, walking vaguely
through the garden into the fields, as though to escape it. But the
horror pursued her, only in different forms. Among the educated
people--people who liked dissecting "interesting" or "mysterious"
crimes--there had been no doubt long discussions of Sir James Chide's
letter to the _Times_, of Sir Francis Wing's confession. But through all
the talk, rustic or refined, she heard the name of her mother bandied;
forever soiled and dishonored; with no right to privacy or courtesy any
more--"Juliet Sparling" to all the world: the loafer at the street
corner--the drunkard in the tavern--

T