"If one does not swim, I know it is quite too cold," said Diana. "I am glad you are familiar with that country, for then you can sympathize with my enthusiasm. I long to have a place there of my own and, perhaps with such congruity of taste, you and I together can persuade my parents that it would not be too erratic in me to buy a part of that green hill and be there a little while every year." The invalid nodded. "I'll say Amen to anything you indicate," he returned readily. How devoutly Diana hoped this promise might be kept! "I have another reason for being glad to meet a man relative just now," she went on. "There are some people at the Inn where I am staying who present such a strange problem. When injustice is obviously being done, one longs to help." Her companion nodded. "That is natural, but usually futile," he said. "It is a very good rule to 'keep off the grass.'" "Yes, but this affair makes me very unhappy, Cousin Herbert." "A shame," he returned, and he would like to have patted her pretty hand, but she was on his left side. "Too bad there is always some serpent in paradise. Don't be too tender-hearted, my dear. Don't be too tender-hearted. It doesn't pay. Of course, where-ever you go people will try to lay you under tribute. You must learn to wear an armor, a full suit of chain armor under your dainty costumes." "This is not a question of money," said Diana, her heart beating faster and, for the first time, she quaked at the full realization of her errand. "Would you let me tell you about it, Cousin Herbert?" "Why, of course, my child, if it is any satisfaction to you to confide in such a useless old cripple as I have become." "You are far from that," returned the girl, steadying the voice which threatened to waver. "Your opinion on the subject will be very valuable to me." The sick man lifted his heavy eyebrows and smoothed his mustache. "Then proceed, by all means," he said. "One thing I have in tragic abundance is time; and I am flattered." "There is a man at our Inn," began Diana, her fingers tightly intertwined in her lap, "who has a young boy in his power. The lad is his nephew. He shows every sign of years of neglect. The uncle continually betrays himself, and scarcely tries to hide the fact that he is looking forward to incarcerating the boy in some institution for the deranged." "Simply to get rid of him?" "No; there is money back in the family somewhere, and we--I have come to the conviction that this man believes the boy will fall heir to it, and that, if he is safely out of the way, the uncle as guardian will get control of this money." "What sort of mentality does the boy seem to have?" "He is a sensitive, fine-grained lad with just the sort of nature which persistent brutality will blight and paralyze. He has been so neglected that he has little physical resistance and one can see him being gradually crushed with as little hope of escape as the fly in the spider's web."