e had been prolonged, owing to a slight but
troublesome wound in the arm, of which he had made nothing on coming
home. No wound could have been more opportune--more friendly to the
doctor's craving for a daughter-in-law. It kept the Captain at
Beechcote, but it did not prevent him from coming over every Sunday to
Tallyn to bring flowers or letters, or news from the village; and it was
positively benefited by such mild exercise as a man may take, in company
with a little round-eyed woman, feather-light and active, yet in
relation to Diana, like a tethered dove, that can only take short
flights. Only here it was a tether self-imposed and of the heart.

There was no direct wooing, however, and for weeks their talk was all of
Diana. Then the Captain's arm got well, and Nigeria called. But Muriel
would not have allowed him to say a word before departure had it not
been for Diana--and the doctor--who were suddenly found to have entered,
in regard to this matter, upon a league and covenant not to be resisted.
Whether the doctor opened Diana's eyes need not be inquired; it is
certain that if, all the while, in Oliver's room, she and Lady Lucy had
not been wrestling hour by hour with death--or worse--Diana would have
wanted no one to open them. When she did understand, there was no
opposing her. She pleaded--not without tears--to be given the happiness
of knowing they were pledged, and her Muriel safe in harbor. So
Roughsedge had his say; a quiet engagement began its course in the
world; Brookshire as yet knew nothing; and the doctor triumphed
over Patricia.

During this time Sir James Chide watched the development of a situation
he had not been able to change with a strange mixture of revolt and
sympathy. Sometimes he looked beyond the tragedy which he thought
inevitable to a recovered and normal life for Diana; sometimes he felt a
dismal certainty that when Oliver had left her, that recovered life
could only shape itself to ascetic and self-renouncing ends. Had she
belonged to his own church, she would no doubt have become a
"religious"; and he would have felt it the natural solution. Outside the
Catholic Church, the same need takes shape--he thought--in forms less
suited to a woman's weakness, less conducive to her dignity.

All through he resented the sacrifice of a being so noble, true, and
tender to a love, in his eyes, so unfitting and derogatory. Not all the
pathos of suffering could blunt his sense of Marsham's inferi