"
"Was that what he and Uncle Merton quarrelled about?"
Fanny hesitated again; then broke out: "Father only did what he
ought--he asked for what was owed mother!"
"And papa wouldn't give it!" cried Diana, in a strange note of scorn;
"papa, who never could rest if he owed a farthing to anybody--who always
overpaid everybody--whom everybody--"
[Illustration: "YOU NEEDN'T BE CROSS WITH ME, DIANA"]
She rose suddenly with a bitten lip. Her eyes blazed--and her cheeks.
She walked to the window and stood looking out, in a whirlwind of
feeling and memory, hiding her face as best she could from the girl
who sat watching her with an expression half sulky, half insolent. Diana
was thinking of moments--recalling forgotten fragments of dialogue--in
the past, which showed her father's opinion of his Barbadoes
brother-in-law: "A grasping, ill-bred fellow"--"neither gratitude, nor
delicacy"--"has been the evil genius of his wife, and will be the ruin
of his children." She did not believe a word of Fanny's story--not a
word of it!
She turned impetuously. Then, as her eyes met Fanny's, a shock ran
through her--the same sudden, inexplicable fear which had seized on Mrs.
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