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Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 1851-1920

"The Testing of Diana Mallory"


"I say!--don't take that line with Isabel!"
"Well, mine probably aren't worth much--but they are mine--and papa
taught them me--and I can't give them up."
"What'll you do, darling?--canvass against me?" He kissed her hand
again.
"No--but I _can't_ agree with you!"
"Of course you can't. Which of us, _I_ wonder, will shake the other? How
do you know that I'm not in a blue fright for my principles?"
"You'll explain to me?--you'll not despise me?" she said, softly,
bending toward him; "I'll always, always try and understand."
Who could resist an attitude so feminine, yet so loyal, at once so old
and new? Marsham felt himself already attacked by the poison of Toryism,
and Diana, with a happy start, envisaged horizons that her father never
knew, and questions where she had everything to learn.
Hand in hand, trembling still under the thrill of the moment which had
fused their lives, they fell into happy discursive talk: of the Tallyn
visit--of her thoughts and his--of what Lady Lucy and Mr. Ferrier had
said, or would say. In the midst of it the fall of temperature, which
came with the sunset, touched them, and Marsham sprang up with the
peremptoriness of a new relationship, insisting that he must take her
home out of the chilly dusk.


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