Very deft, and tender, and skilful it must be. But no one
could say that time-worn Persian rugs, with their iridescent blue and
greens and rose reds--or old Italian damask and cut-velvet from Genoa,
or Florence, or Venice--were out of harmony with the charming Jacobean
rooms. It was the horrible furniture of the Vavasours, the ancestral
possessors of the place, which had been an offence and a disfigurement.
In moving it out and replacing it, Diana felt that she had become the
spiritual child of the old house, in spite of her alien blood. There is
a kinship not of the flesh; and it thrilled all through her.
But just as her pause of daily homage to the place in which she found
herself was over, and she was about to run down the remaining stairs to
the dining-room, a new thought delayed her for a moment by the staircase
window--the thought of a lady who would no doubt be waiting for her at
the breakfast-table.
Mrs. Colwood, Miss Mallory's new chaperon and companion, had arrived the
night before, on Christmas Eve. She had appeared just in time for
dinner, and the two ladies had spent the evening together. Diana's first
impressions had been pleasant--yes, certainly, pleasant; though Mrs.
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