Mrs. Colwood had been two
years, her two short years of married life, in India; Diana had
travelled there with her father. Also, as a girl, Mrs. Colwood had spent
a winter at Cannes, and another at Santa Margherita. Diana expressed
with vehemence her weariness of the Riviera; but the fact that Mrs.
Colwood differed from her led to all the more conversation.
"My father would never come home," sighed Diana. "He hated the English
climate, even in summer. Every year I used to beg him to let us go to
England. But he never would. We lived abroad, first, I suppose, for his
health, and then--I can't explain it. Perhaps he thought he had been so
long away he would find no old friends left. And indeed so many of them
had died. But whenever I talked of it he began to look old and ill. So I
never could press it--never!"
The girl's voice fell to a lower note--musical, and full of memory. Mrs.
Colwood noticed the quality of it.
"Of course if my mother had lived," said Diana, in the same tone, "it
would have been different."
"But she died when you were a child?"
"Eighteen years ago. I can just remember it. We were in London then.
Afterwards father took me abroad, and we never came back.
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