"Oh, but d.i.c.ky is the dearest child! The sweetest-natured, the cleanest-minded! Have you not seen him yet?"

Lady Caroline stared. As little as royalty did she understand being cross-questioned. It gave her a quite unexpected sense of helplessness.

"I fear you do not at all grasp the position," she said severely.

"After all, I had done better to disregard your feelings, whatever they may be, and come to terms at once."

"No," answered Ruth, musing; "I do not understand the position; but I want to, more than I can say--and your ladyship must help me, please."

She paused a moment. "In New England we prize good birth, good breeding, and what we too call 'family'; but I think the word must mean something different to you who live at home in England."

"I should hope so!" breathed Lady Caroline.

"It must be mixed up somehow with the great estates you have held for generations and the old houses you have lived in. No," she went on, as Lady Caroline would have interrupted; "please let me work it out in my own way, and then you shall correct me where I am wrong. . . . I have often thought how beautiful it must be to live in such an old house, one that has all its corners full of memories--the nurseries most of all-- of children and grandchildren, that have grown up in gentleness and courtesy and honour--"

"Good Lord!" Lady Caroline interjected. "You mean"--Ruth smiled-- "that I am talking like a book? That is partly my fault and partly our New England way; because, you see, we have to get at these things from books. Does it, after all, matter how--if only we get it right? . . .

There's a tradition--what, I believe, you call an 'atmosphere'--and you are proud of it and very jealous."

"If you see all this," said Lady Caroline, mollified, "our business should be easier, with a little common sense on your part."

"And it knits you," pursued Ruth, "into a sort of family conspiracy-- the womenkind especially--like bees in a hive. The head of the family is the queen bee, and you respect him amazingly; but all the same you keep your own judgment, and know when to thwart and when to disobey him, for his own and the family's good. I think you disobeyed Sir Oliver in coming here; or, at least, deceived him and came here without his knowledge."

"I am not accustomed," said Lady Caroline, rising, "to direct my conduct upon my nephew's advice."

"That, more or less, is what I was trying to say. Dear madam, let me warn you to do so, if you would manage his private affairs."

They faced each other now, upon declared war. Lady Caroline's neck was suffused to a purplish red behind the ears. She gasped for speech.

Before she found it there came a tapping on the door, and Diana Vyell entered.

Chapter XIII.

DIANA VYELL.

"Have you not finished yet?" Miss Diana closed the door, glanced from one to the other, and laughed with a genial brutality. "Well, it's time I came. Dear mamma, you seem to be getting your feathers pulled."

There was a byword among the Whig families at home (who, by intermarrying, had learned to gauge another's weaknesses), that "the Pett medal showed ill in reverse." Miss Diana had heard the saying. As a Vyell--the Vyells were, before all things, critical--she knew it to be just, as well as malicious; but as a dutiful daughter she ought to have remembered.

As it was, her cool comment stung her mother to fury. The poor lady pointed a finger at Ruth, and spluttered (there is no more elegant word for the very inelegant exhibition),--

"A strumpet! One that has been whipped through the public streets."

There was a dreadful pause. Miss Diana, the first to recover herself, stepped back to the door and held it open.

"You must excuse dear mamma," she said coolly. "She has overtired herself."

But Lady Caroline continued to point a finger trembling with pa.s.sion.

"Her price!" she shrilled. "Ask her that. It is all these creatures ever understand!"

Miss Diana slipped an arm beneath her elbow and firmly conducted her forth. Ruth, hearing the door shut, supposed that both women had withdrawn. She sank into a chair, and was stretching out her arms over the table to bury her face in them and sob, when the voice of the younger said quietly behind her shoulder,--

"It is always hard, after mamma's tantrums, to bring the talk back to a decent level. Nevertheless, shall we try?"

Ruth had drawn herself up again, rallying the spirit in her. It was weary, bruised; but its hour of default was not yet. Her voice dragged, but just perceptibly, as she answered Miss Vyell, who nodded, noting her courage and wondering a little,--

"I am sorry."

"Sorry?"

"Yes; it was partly my fault--very largely my fault. But your mother angered me from the first by a.s.suming--what she had no right to a.s.sume.

It was horrible."

Diana Vyell seated herself, eyed her steadily for a moment, and nodded again. "Mamma can be _raide_, there's no denying. She was wrong, of course; that's understood. . . . Still, on the whole you have done pretty well, and had your revenge."

Ruth's eyes widened, for this was beyond her.

Diana explained. "You have let us make the most impossible fools of ourselves. It may have been more by luck than by good management, as they say; but there it is. Now don't say that revenge isn't sweet.

. . . I've done you what justice I can; but if you pose as an angel from heaven, it's asking too much." While Ruth considered this, she added, "I don't know if you can put yourself in mamma's place for a moment; but if you can, the hoax is complete enough, you'll admit."

"I had rather put myself in yours."

Their eyes met, and Diana's cheek reddened slightly. "You are an extraordinary girl," she said, "and there seems no way but to be honest with you. Unfortunately, it's not so easy, even with the best will in the world. Can you understand _that?_"

"If you love him--"

"Oh, for pity's sake spare me!" Diana bounced up and stepped to the window. The red on her cheek had deepened, and she averted it to stare out at the poultry in the yard. "You are unconscionable," she said after a while, with a vexed laugh. "I have known my cousin Oliver since we were children together. Really, you know, you're almost as brutal as mamma. . . . The truth? Let me see. Well, the truth, so near as I can tell it, is that I just let mamma have her head, and waited to see what would happen. This was her expedition, and I took no responsibility for it from the first."

"I understand." Ruth, watching the back of her head, spoke musingly, with pursed lips.

"Excuse me"--Diana wheeled about suddenly--"you cannot possibly understand just yet. This last was my tenth season in London.

One grows weary . . . and then in the confusion of papa's death-- It comes to this, that I was ready for anything to get out of the old rut. I--I--shall we say that I just cast myself on fate? It may have been at the back of my head that whatever happened might be worse, but couldn't well be wearier. But if you think I had any design of setting my cap at him--"

"Hush!" said Ruth softly. "I had no such thought."

"And if you had, you would not have cared," said Diana, eyeing her again long and steadily. "Mamma--you really must forgive mamma. If you knew them, there was never a Pett that was not _impayable_. Mamma spoke of asking your price. . . . As if, for any price, he would give you up!"

"I have no price to ask, of him or of any one."

"No, and you need have none. I am often very disagreeable," said Diana candidly, "but my worst enemy won't charge me with disparaging good looks in other women."

"May I use your words," said Ruth, with a shy smile, "and say that you have no need?"

"Rubbish! And don't talk like that to me, sitting here and staring you in the face, or I may change my mind again and hate you! I never said I didn't _envy_. . . . But there, the fault was mine for speaking of 'good looks' when I should have said, 'Oh, you wonder!'" broke off Diana. "May I ask it--one question?"

"Twenty, if you will."

"It is a brutal one; horrible; worse even than mamma's."