"My sister? I don't know what to say about Isabel, dearest--unless I parody an old saying. She and I have never agreed--except in opinion. We have been on the same side--and in hot opposition--since our childhood. No--I dare say she will be thorny! Why did you fight me so well, little rebel?" He looked down into her dark eyes, revelling in their sweetness, and in the bliss of her surrendered beauty. If this was not his first proposal, it was his first true passion--of that he was certain. She released herself--rosy--and still thinking of Mrs. Fotheringham. "Oliver!"--she laid her hand shyly on his--"neither she nor you will want me to stifle what I think--to deny what I do really believe? I dare say a woman's politics aren't worth much"--she laughed and sighed. "I say!--don't take that line with Isabel!" "Well, mine probably aren't worth much--but they are mine--and papa taught them me--and I can't give them up." "What'll you do, darling?--canvass against me?" He kissed her hand again. "No--but I _can't_ agree with you!" "Of course you can't. Which of us, _I_ wonder, will shake the other? How do you know that I'm not in a blue fright for my principles?" "You'll explain to me?--you'll not despise me?" she said, softly, bending toward him; "I'll always, always try and understand." Who could resist an attitude so feminine, yet so loyal, at once so old and new? Marsham felt himself already attacked by the poison of Toryism, and Diana, with a happy start, envisaged horizons that her father never knew, and questions where she had everything to learn. Hand in hand, trembling still under the thrill of the moment which had fused their lives, they fell into happy discursive talk: of the Tallyn visit--of her thoughts and his--of what Lady Lucy and Mr. Ferrier had said, or would say. In the midst of it the fall of temperature, which came with the sunset, touched them, and Marsham sprang up with the peremptoriness of a new relationship, insisting that he must take her home out of the chilly dusk. As they stood lingering in the hollow, unwilling to leave the gnarled thorns, the heather-carpet, and the glow of western light--symbols to them henceforth that they too, in their turn, amid the endless generations, had drunk the mystic cup, and shared the sacred feast--Diana perceived some movement far below, on the open space in front of Beechcote. A little peering through the twilight showed them two horses with their riders leaving the Beechcote door. "Oh! your cousin--and Sir James!" cried Diana, in distress, "and I haven't said good-bye--" "You will see them soon again. And I shall carry them the news to-night." "Will you? Shall I allow it?"