Sir James said little or nothing. He knew Lady Lucy well, and had known her long. Presently he rose abruptly and went up-stairs to bed. "Ought I to speak?" he asked himself, in an agony of doubt. "Perhaps a word to Ferrier?--" No!--impossible!--impossible! Yet, as he mounted the stairs, over the house which had just seen the triumph of Diana, over that radiant figure itself, the second sight of the great lawyer perceived the brooding of a cloud of fate; nor could he do anything to avert or soften its downfall. * * * * * Meanwhile Diana's golden hour had found an unexpected epilogue. After her good-night to Marsham she was walking along the gallery corridor going toward her room, when she perceived Miss Vincent in front of her moving slowly and, as it seemed, with difficulty. A sudden impulse made Diana fly after her. "Do let me help you!" she said, shyly. Marion Vincent smiled, and put her hand in the girl's arm. "How do people manage to live at all in these big houses, and with dinner-parties every night!" she said, laughing. "After a day in the East End I am never half so tired." She was indeed so pale that Diana was rather frightened, and remembering that in the afternoon she had seen Miss Vincent descend from an upper floor, she offered a rest in her own room, which was close by, before the evidently lame woman attempted further stairs. Marion Vincent hesitated a moment, then accepted. Diana hurried up a chair to the fire, installed her there, and herself sat on the floor watching her guest with some anxiety. Yet, as she did so, she felt a certain antagonism. The face, of which the eyes were now closed, was nobly grave. The expression of its deeply marked lines appealed to her heart. But why this singularity--this eccentricity? Miss Vincent wore the same dress of dark woollen stuff, garnished with white frills, in which she had appeared the night before, and her morning attire, as Mr. Frobisher had foretold, had consisted of a precisely similar garment, adorned with a straight collar instead of frills. Surely a piece of acting!--of unnecessary self-assertion!