"I?" said Diana, laughing and blushing.

"You can!" smiled Mr. Ferrier. "Witness how you have been making me
chatter! But I think I read you right? You do not mind if one
chatters?--if one gives you information?"

"Mind!--How could I be anything but grateful? It puzzles me so--this--"
she hesitated.

"This English life?--especially the political life? Well!--let me be
your guide. I have been in it for a long while."

Diana thanked him, and rose.

"You want your room?" he asked her, kindly.--"Mrs. Fotheringham, I
think, is in the drawing-room. Let me take you to her. But, first, look
at two or three of these pictures as you go."

"These--pictures?" faltered Diana, looking round her, her tone changing.

"Oh, not those horrible frescos! Those were perpetrated by Marsham's
father. They represent, as you see, the different processes of the Iron
Trade. Old Henry Marsham liked them, because, as he said, they explained
him, and the house. Oliver would like to whitewash them--but for filial
piety. People might suppose him ashamed of his origin. No, no!--I mean
those two or three old pictures at the end of the room. Come and look at
them--they are on our way."

He led her to inspect them. They proved to be two Gainsboroughs and a
Raeburn, representing ancestors on Lady Lucy's side. Mr. Ferrier's talk