Diana did not reply. The little _fiancée_ insisted on the right to take her to her pony-carriage, and kissed her tenderly before she let her go. Diana had already become as a sister to her and Bobbie, trusted in their secrets and advising in their affairs. Lady Niton, standing by Sir James, looked after her. "Well, there's only one thing in the world that girl wants; and I suppose nobody in their senses ought to help her to it." "What do you mean?" She murmured a few words in his ear. "Not a bit of it!" said Sir James, violently. "I forbid it. Don't you go and put anything of the sort into her head. The young man I mean her to marry comes back from Nigeria this very day." "She won't marry him!" "We shall see." * * * * * Diana drove home through lanes suffused with sunset and rich with autumn. There had been much rain through September, and the deluged earth steamed under the return of the sun. Mists were rising from the stubbles, and wrapping the woods in sleep and purple. To her the beauty of it all was of a mask or pageant--seen from a distance across a plain or through a street-opening--lovely and remote. All that was real--all that lived--was the image within the mind; not the great earth-show without. As she passed through the village she fell in with the Roughsedges: the doctor, with his wide-awake on the back of his head, a book and a bulging umbrella under his arm; Mrs. Roughsedge, in a new shawl, and new bonnet-strings, with a prodigal flutter of side curls beside her ample countenance. Hugh, it appeared, was expected by an evening train. Diana begged that he might be brought up to see her some time in the course of the following afternoon. Then she drove on, and Mrs. Roughsedge was left staring discontentedly at her husband. "I think she _was_ glad, Henry?" "Think it, my dear, if it does you any good," said the doctor, cheerfully. * * * * * When Diana reached home night had fallen--a moon-lit night, through which all the shapes and even the colors of day were still to be seen or divined in a softened and pearly mystery. Muriel Colwood was not at home. She had gone to town, on one of her rare absences, to meet some relations. Diana missed her, and yet was conscious that even the watch of those kind eyes would--to-night--have added to the passionate torment of thought. As she sat alone in the drawing-room after her short and solitary meal her nature bent and trembled under the blowing of those winds of fate, which, like gusts among autumn trees, have tested or strained or despoiled the frail single life since time began; winds of love and pity, of desire and memory, of anguish and of longing.