ing for it; Diana must be told. But she hated her task.

On reaching Beechcote she noticed a fly at the door, and paused a moment
to consider whether her visit might not be inopportune. It was a
beautiful day, and Diana and Mrs. Colwood were probably to be found in
some corner of the garden. Mrs. Roughsedge walked round the side of the
house to reconnoitre.

As she reached the beautiful old terrace at the back of the house, on
which the drawing-room opened, suddenly a figure came flying through the
drawing-room window--the figure of a girl in a tumbled muslin dress,
with a large hat, and a profusion of feathers and streamers fluttering
about her. In her descent upon the terrace she dropped her gloves;
stooping to pick them up, she dropped her boa; in her struggle to
recapture that, she trod on and tore her dress.

_"Damn_!" said the young lady, furiously.

And at the voice, the word, the figure, Mrs. Roughsedge stood arrested
and open-mouthed, her old woman's bonnet slipping back a little on her
gray curls.

The young woman was Fanny Merton. She had evidently just arrived, and
was in search of Diana. Mrs. Roughsedge thought a moment, and then
turned and sadly walked home again. No good interfering now! Poor Diana
would have to tackle the situation for herself.

* * * * *

Diana and Mrs. Colwood were on the lawn, surreptitiously at work on
clothes for the child in the spinal jacket, who was soon going away to a
convalescent home, and had to be rigged out. The grass was strewn with
pieces of printed cotton and flannel, with books and work-baskets. But
they were not sitting where Ferrier had looked his last upon the world
three weeks before. There, under the tall limes, across the lawn, on
that sad and sacred spot, Diana meant in the autumn to plant a group of
cypresses (the tree of mourning) "for remembrance."

"Fanny!" cried Diana, in amazement, rising from her chair.

At her cousin's voice, Fanny halted, a few yards away.

"Well," she said, defiantly, "of course I know you didn't expect to see
me!"

Diana had grown very pale. Muriel saw a shiver run through her--the
shiver of the victim brought once more into the presence of
the torturer.

"I thought you were in London," she stammered, moving forward and
holding out her hand mechanically. "Please come and sit down." She
cleared a chair of the miscellaneous needlework upon it.

"I want to speak to you very particularly," sai