So
that after half an hour spent with Mrs. Roughsedge and Hugh in the
little drawing-room at the White Cottage, Diana's aspect was very
different from what it had been when she arrived.
Hugh, however, had noticed her pallor and depression. He was obstinately
certain that Oliver Marsham was not the man to make such a girl happy.
Between the rich Radical member and the young officer--poor, slow of
speech and wits, and passionately devoted to the old-fashioned ideals
and traditions in which he had been brought up--there was a natural
antagonism. But Roughsedge's contempt for his brilliant and successful
neighbor--on the ground of selfish ambitions and unpatriotic
trucklings--was, in truth, much more active than anything Marsham had
ever shown--or felt--toward himself. For in the young soldier there
slept potentialities of feeling and of action, of which neither he nor
others were as yet aware.
Nevertheless, he faced the facts. He remembered the look with which
Diana had returned to the Beechcote drawing-room, where Marsham awaited
her, the day before--and told himself not to be a fool.
Meanwhile he had found an opportunity in which to tell her, unheard by
his parents, that he was practically certain of his Nigerian
appointment, and must that night break it to his father and mother.
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