e is very
sorry--and would Sir James be kind enough to come and see him after
breakfast to-morrow?"

Lady Lucy threw up her hands in a little gesture of despair, Then she
rose, and went to speak to the servant in the doorway.

When she returned she looked whiter and more shrivelled than before.

"Is he worse to-night?" asked Sir James, gently.

"It is the pain," she said, in a muffled voice; "and we can't touch
it--yet. He mustn't have any more morphia--yet."

She sat down once more. Sir James, the best of gossips, glided off into
talk of London, and of old common friends, trying to amuse and distract
her. But he realized that she scarcely listened to him, and that he was
talking to a woman whose life was being ground away between a last
affection and the torment it had power to cause her. A new Lady Lucy,
indeed! Had any one ever dared to pity her before?

Meanwhile, five miles off, a girl whom he loved as a daughter was eating
her heart out for sorrow over this mother and son--consumed, as he
guessed, with the wild desire to offer them, in any sacrificial mode
they pleased, her youth and her sweet self. In one way or another he had
found out that Hugh Roughsedge had been sent about his business--of
course, with all the usual softening formulae.

And now there was a kind of mute conflict going on between himself and
Mrs. Colwood on the one side, and Diana on the other side.

No, she should not spend and waste her youth in the vain attempt to mend
this house of tragedy!--it was not to be tolerated--not to be thought
of. She would suffer, but she would get over it; and Oliver would
probably die. Sooner or later she would begin life afresh, if only he
was able to stand between her and the madness in her heart.

But as he sat there, looking at Lady Lucy, he realized that it might
have been better for his powers and efficacy as a counsellor if he, too,
had held aloof from this house of pain.

CHAPTER XXIV

It was about ten o'clock at night. Lankester, who had arrived from
London an hour before, had said good-night to Lady Lucy and Sir James,
and had slipped into Marsham's room. Marsham had barred his door that
evening against both his mother and Sir James. But Lankester was
not excluded.

Off and on and in the intervals of his parliamentary work he had been
staying at Tallyn for some days. A letter from Lady Lucy, in reply to an
inquiry, had brought him down. Oliver had received him with few
words--in