Also, that she tried to carry Oliver
Marsham with her, but unsuccessfully. He had returned to Diana's
neighborhood, and stood leaning over a chair beside her, listening to
her conversation with Mr. Ferrier.
His sister, Mrs. Fotheringham, was not content to listen. Diana's
impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear,
evidently roused her pugnacity. She threw herself on all the girl's
rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the
"locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish--bores, in fact, of
the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham
joined in. He showed himself possessed of a sharper and more caustic
tongue than Diana had yet suspected. His sister's sallies only amused
him, and sometimes he improved on them, with epithets or comments,
shrewder than hers indeed, but quite as biting.
"His neighbors and constituents!" thought Diana, in a young
astonishment. "The people who send him to Parliament!"
Mr. Ferrier seemed to become aware of her surprise and disapproval, for
he once or twice threw in a satirical word or two, at the expense, not
of the criticised, but of the critics.
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