Mrs. Roughsedge folded the
girl to her heart, and fairly broke down. Diana comforted her; but it
seemed as if her own tears were now dry. When they were parting, she
called her friend back a moment.
"I think," she said, steadily, "it would be best now that everybody here
should know what my name was, and who I am. Will you tell the Vicar, and
anybody else you think of? I shall come back to live here. I know
everybody will be kind--" Her voice died away.
The March sun had set and the lamps were lit when Hugh Roughsedge
entered the drawing-room where Diana sat writing letters, paying bills,
absorbing herself in all the details of departure. The meeting between
them was short. Diana was embarrassed, above all, by the tumult of
suppressed feeling she divined in Roughsedge. For the first time she
must perforce recognize what hitherto she had preferred not to see: what
now she was determined not to know. The young soldier, on his side, was
stifled by his own emotions--wrath--contempt--pity; and by a maddening
desire to wrap this pale stricken creature in his arms, and so protect
her from an abominable world. But something told him--to his
despair--that she had been in Marsham's arms; had given her heart
irrevocably; and that, Marsham's wife or no, all was done and over for
him, Hugh Roughsedge.
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