Then she turned, and he knew
that she was going back to Marsham. At the same moment he saw Mrs.
Colwood's little figure disappearing up the main stairway. Frowning and
silent, he followed his mother out of the house.
Diana looked round rather wistfully for Mrs. Colwood as she re-entered
the room; but that lady had many letters to write.
Marsham noticed Mrs. Colwood's retreat with a thrill of pleasure. Yet
even now he had no immediate declaration in his mind. The course that he
had marked out for himself had been exactly followed. There had been no
"hurrying it." Only in these weeks before Parliament, while matters of
great moment to his own political future were going forward, and his
participation in them was not a whit less cool and keen than it had
always been, he had still found abundant time for the wooing of Diana.
He had assumed a kind of guardian's attitude in the matter of her
relations to the Vavasours--who in business affairs had proved both
greedy and muddle-headed; he had flattered her woman's vanity by the
insight he had freely allowed her into the possibilities and the
difficulties of his own Parliamentary position, and of his relations to
Ferrier; and he had kept alive a kind of perpetual interest and flutter
in her mind concerning him, by the challenge he was perpetually offering
to the opinions and ideas in which she had been brought up--while yet
combining it with a respect toward her father's memory, so courteous,
and, in truth, sincere, that she was alternately roused and subdued.
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