She hardly
suspected, indeed, how often she herself made the subject of the man's
letters. Ferrier wrote of her persistently to Lady Lucy, being
determined that so much punishment at least should be meted out to that
lady. The mistress of Tallyn, on her side, never mentioned the name of
Miss Mallory. All the pages in his letters which concerned her might
never have been written, and he was well aware that not a word of them
would ever reach Oliver. Diana's pale and saddened beauty; the dignity
which grief, tragic grief, free from all sordid or ignoble elements, can
infuse into a personality; the affection she inspired, the universal
sympathy that was felt for her: he dwelt on these things, till Lady
Lucy, exasperated, could hardly bring herself to open the envelopes
which contained his lucubrations. Could any subject, in correspondence
with herself, be more unfitting or more futile?--and what difference
could it all possibly make to the girl's shocking antecedents?
* * * * *
One radiant afternoon, after a long day of sight-seeing, Diana and Mrs.
Colwood retreated to their rooms to write letters and to rest; Forbes
was hotly engaged in bargaining for an Umbrian _primitif_, which he had
just discovered in an old house in a back street, whither, no doubt, the
skilful antiquario had that morning transported it from his shop; and
Sir James had gone out for a stroll, on the splendid road which winds
gradually down the hill on which Perugia stands, to the tomb of the
Volumnii, on the edge of the plain, and so on to Assisi and Foligno, in
the blue distance.
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