The Testing of Diana Mallory Part 19

Diana meanwhile, a.s.sisted by Mrs. Colwood, was hovering about her cousin. She and Miss Merton had kissed each other in the hall, and then Diana, seized with a sudden shyness, led her guest into the drawing-room and stood there speechless, a little; holding her by both hands and gazing at her; mastered by feeling and excitement.

"Well, you _have_ got a queer old place!" said f.a.n.n.y Merton, withdrawing herself. She turned and looked about her, at the room, the flowers, the wide hearth, with its blazing logs, at Mrs. Colwood, and finally at Diana.

"We are so fond of it already!" said Diana. "Come and get warm." She settled her guest in a chair by the fire, and took a stool beside her.

"Did you like Devonshire?"

The girl made a little face.

"It was awfully quiet. Oh, my friends, of course, made a lot of fuss over me--and that kind of thing. But I wouldn't live there, not if you paid me."

"We're very quiet here," said Diana, timidly. She was examining the face beside her, with its bright crude color, its bold eyes, and sulky mouth, slightly underhung.

"Oh, well, you've got some good families about, I guess. I saw one or two awfully smart carriages waiting at the station."

"There are a good many nice people," murmured Diana. "But there is not much going on."

"I expect you could invite a good many here if you wanted," said the girl, once more looking round her. "Whatever made you take this place?"

"I like old things so much," laughed Diana. "Don't you?"

"Well, I don't know. I think there's more style about a new house. You can have electric light and all that sort of thing."

Diana admitted it, and changed the subject. "Had the journey been cold?"

Freezing, said Miss Merton. But a young man had lent her his fur coat to put over her knees, which had improved matters. She laughed--rather consciously.

"He lives near here. I told him I was sure you'd ask him to something, if he called."

"Who was he?"

With much rattling of the bangles on her wrists, f.a.n.n.y produced a card from her hand-bag. Diana looked at it in dismay. It was the card of a young solicitor whom she had once met at a local tea-party, and decided to avoid thenceforward.

She said nothing, however, and plunged into inquiries as to her aunt and cousins.

"Oh! they're all right. Mother's worried out of her life about money; but, then, we've always been that poor you couldn't skin a cent off us, so that's nothing new."

Diana murmured sympathy. She knew vaguely that her father had done a good deal to subsidize these relations. She could only suppose that in his ignorance he had not done enough.

Meanwhile f.a.n.n.y Merton had fixed her eyes upon Diana with a curious hostile look, almost a stare, which had entered them as she spoke of the family poverty, and persisted as they travelled from Diana's face and figure to the pretty and s.p.a.cious room beyond. She examined everything, in a swift keen scrutiny, and then as the pouncing glance came back to her cousin, the girl suddenly exclaimed:

"Goodness! but you are like Aunt Sparling!"

Diana flushed crimson. She drew back and said, hurriedly, to Mrs.

Colwood:

"Muriel, would you see if they have taken the luggage up-stairs?"

Mrs. Colwood went at once.

f.a.n.n.y Merton had herself changed color, and looked a little embarra.s.sed.

She did not repeat her remark, but began to take her furs off, to smooth her hair deliberately, and settle her bracelets. Diana came nearer to her as soon as they were alone.

"Do you really think I am like mamma?" she said, tremulously, all her eyes fixed upon her cousin.

"Well, of course I never saw her!" said Miss Merton, looking down at the fire. "How could I? But mother has a picture of her, and you're as like as two peas."

"I never saw any picture of mamma," said Diana; "I don't know at all what she was like."

"Ah, well--" said Miss Merton, still looking down. Then she stopped, and said no more. She took out her handkerchief, and began to rub a spot of mud off her dress. It seemed to Diana that her manner was a little strange, and rather rude. But she had made up her mind there would be peculiarities in f.a.n.n.y, and she did not mean to be repelled by them.

"Shall I take you to your room?" she said. "You must be tired, and we shall be dining directly."

Miss Merton allowed herself to be led up-stairs, looking curiously round her at every step.

"I say, you must be well off!" she burst out, as they came to the head of the stairs, "or you'd never be able to run a place like this!"

"Papa left me all his money," said Diana, coloring again. "I hope he wouldn't have thought it extravagant."

She pa.s.sed on in front of her guest, holding a candle. f.a.n.n.y Merton followed. At Diana's statement as to her father's money the girl's face had suddenly resumed its sly hostility. And as Diana walked before her, Miss Merton again examined the house, the furniture, the pictures; but this time, and unknown to Diana, with the air of one half jealous and half contemptuous of all she saw.

Part II

"_The soberest saints are more stiff-necked Than the hottest-headed of the wicked._"

CHAPTER VII

"I shall soon be back," said Diana--"very soon. I'll just take this book to Dr. Roughsedge. You don't mind?"

The question was addressed--in a deprecatory tone--to Mrs. Colwood, who stood beside her at the Beechcote front door.

Muriel Colwood smiled, and drew the furs closer round the girl's slim throat.

"I shall mind very much if you don't stay out a full hour and get a good walk."

Diana ran off, followed by her dog. There was something in the manner both of the dog and its mistress that seemed to show impetuous escape--and relief.

"She looks tired out!" said the little companion to herself, as she turned to enter the hall. "How on earth is she going to get through six weeks of it?--or six months!"

The house as she walked back through it made upon her the odd impression of having suddenly lost some of its charm. The peculiar sentiment--as of a warmly human, yet delicately ordered life, which it had breathed out so freely only twenty-four hours before, seemed to her quick feeling to have been somehow obscured or dissipated. All its defects, old or new--the patches in the panelling, the darkness of the pa.s.sages--stood out.

And "all along of Eliza!" All because of Miss f.a.n.n.y Merton! Mrs. Colwood recalled the morning--Miss Merton's late arrival at the breakfast-table, and the discovery from her talk that she was accustomed to breakfast in bed, waited upon by her younger sisters; her conversation at breakfast, partly about the prices of clothes and eatables, partly in boasting reminiscence of her winnings at cards, or in sweepstakes on the "run,"