“Diamond--yes. She married young and went out to the East about five years ago. I don’t think she’s been to Cross Loman since. Now she’s here for a year, I believe, having left the husband behind. The children have met her with Nancy Fazackerly and Martyn introduced her to me.” “In the old days, of course, you’d have seen her behind a typewriter in her father’s office?” “Exactly.” Mary smiled. The changes that the war has brought about in social intercourse do not perturb her in the least. She can afford to accept them. “Mother,” said Sallie, “have you finished Mrs. Harter?” “One minute.” The portraits, when they were read aloud, struck me as forming rather an interesting comment upon the person who had inspired them. Of the writers, only the two Kendals were negligible as observers of human nature. “Bad-tempered, Determined, Intelligent, Pushing, Handsome.” That was Martyn’s version. “Handsome!” ejaculated Sallie. Her own paper began with the word “Repellent” and went on with “Determined, Ambitious, Straightforward, Common.” “I’ve got her down as ‘Common,’ too,” said Claire. “Common, Self-willed, Good-looking, Obstinate, and Hard.” “What a pleasing aggregate!” said I. “Mary, what do you make of Mrs. Harter?” “Sincere, Unhappy, Reserved, Ill-tempered, Undisciplined.” “It’s queer,” said Martyn. “We’ve all been impressed by that woman more or less. And yet we’ve all noticed different things about her.” “Two people said she was common,” Sallie pointed out. “I don’t agree.” “Well,” said Dolly Kendal, “it’s not a very nice thing to say about anyone, is it?” This comment did not materially add to the value of the discussion and met with no rejoinder. “Mrs. Harter is common,” said Claire, with that air of finality with which she invests an assertion of her own opinion, particularly when it is contrary to that held by other people. “But she has personality. That’s why we’re all discussing her, I suppose--old Ellison’s daughter!” “She doesn’t look like old Ellison’s daughter,” Martyn observed, replying, perhaps, rather to the spirit than to the letter of Claire’s assertion. “It was a stroke of genius on his part to have christened his daughter Diamond.” Sallie looked intelligently inquiring. “Don’t you see how it suits her? The mixture of hardness and of depth, and the slight tinge of vulgarity that one can’t help associating with that sort of name--and, of course, the unusualness. By the way, didn’t anyone put her down as unusual?” Claire shook her head. “She may be good-looking, but she’s as hard as nails, I should say--and she’s common.” I began to feel that I should be interested to meet Mrs. Harter.