"Then as my friend I hope you will come and see me at Berwin Manor."
"I shall be delighted.
When do you go down?"
"Within a fortnight.
I must remain that time in town to see my lawyer about the estate left by my poor father."
"And see Mrs. Vrain?"
"No," replied Diana coldly. "Now that my father is dead, Mrs. Vrain is nothing to me.
Indirectly, I look upon her as the cause of his death, for if she had not driven both of us out of our own home, my father might have been alive still.
I shall not call on Mrs. Vrain, and I do not think she will dare to call on me."
"I'm not so sure of that," rejoined Lucian, who was well acquainted with the lengths to which Mrs. Vrain's audacity would carry her; "but let us dismiss her, with all your other troubles. May I call on you again before you leave town?"
"Occasionally," replied Diana, smiling and blushing; "and you will come down to Berwin Manor when I send you an invitation?"
"I should think so," said Denzil, in high glee, as he rose to depart; "and now I will say——"
"Good-bye?" said Miss Vrain, holding out her hand.
"No.
I will use your own form of farewell—au revoir."
Then Lucian went out from the presence of his beloved, exulting that she had proved so kind as not to dismiss him when she no longer required his services.
In another woman he would not have minded such ingratitude, but had Diana banished him thus he would have been miserable beyond words.
Also, as Lucian joyfully reflected, her invitation to Berwin Manor showed that, far from wishing to lose sight of him, she desired to draw him into yet closer intimacy.
There could be nothing but good resulting from her invitation and his acceptance, and already Denzil looked forward to some bright summer's day in the green and leafy country, when he should ask this goddess among women to be his wife.
If encouragement and looks and blushes went for anything, he hardly doubted the happy result.
In the meantime, while Lucian dreamed his dreams, Diana, also dreaming in her own way, remained in town and attended to business.
She saw her lawyers, and had her affairs looked into, so that when she went to Bath she was legally installed as the mistress of Berwin Manor and its surrounding acres.
As Lucian hinted, Lydia did indeed try to see her stepdaughter.
She called twice, and was refused admission into Diana's presence.
She wrote three times, and received no reply to her letters; so the consequence was that, finding Diana declined to have anything to do with her in any way whatsoever, she became very bitter.
This feeling she expressed to Lucian, whom she one day met in Piccadilly.
"As if I had done anything," finished Lydia, after a recital of all her grievances. "I call it real mean.
Don't you think so, Mr. Denzil?"
"If you ask me, Mrs. Vrain," said Lucian stiffly, "I think you and Miss Vrain are better apart."
"Of course you defend her.
But I guess I can't blame you, as I know what you are driving at."
"What about Signor Ferruci?" asked Denzil, parrying.
"Oh, we are good friends still, but nothing more.
As he proved that he did not kill Mark, I've no reason to give him his walking-ticket.
But," added Mrs. Vrain drily, "I guess you'll be married to Diana before I hitch up 'longside Ercole."
"How do you know I shall marry Miss Vrain?" asked Lucian, flushing.
"If you saw your face in a glass, you wouldn't ask, I guess.
Tomatoes ain't in it for redness. I won't dance at your wedding, and I won't break my heart, either," and with a gay nod Mrs. Lydia Vrain tripped away, evidently quite forgetful of the late tragedy in her life.
CHAPTER XXII AT BERWIN MANOR
The heritage of Diana lay some miles from Bath, in a pleasant wooded valley, through which meandered a placid and slow-flowing stream.
On either side of this water stretched broad meadow lands, flat and fertile, as well they might be, seeing they were of rich black loam, and well drained, withal.
To the right these meadows were bounded by forest lands, the trees of which grew thickly up and over the ridge, and on the space where wood met fields was placed the manor, a quaint square building of Georgian architecture, and some two centuries old.
Against the green of the trees its warm walls of red brick and sloping roof of bluish slate made a pleasant spot of colour.
There stretched a terrace before it; beneath the terrace a flower garden and orchard; and below these the meadow lands, white with snow in winter, black in spring, with ridgy furrows, and golden with grain in the hot days of summer.
Altogether a lovely and peaceful spot, where a man could pass pleasant days in rural quiet, a hermitage of rest for the life-worn and heart-weary.
Here, towards the end of summer, came Lucian, to rest his brain after the turmoil of London, and to court his mistress under the most favourable circumstances.
Diana had established herself in her ancestral home with a superannuated governess as a chaperon, for without such a guardianship she could hardly have invited the barrister to visit her.
Miss Priscilla Barbar was a placid, silver-haired old dame, who, having taught Diana for many years, had returned, now that the American Mrs. Vrain had departed, to spend the rest of her days under the roof of her dear pupil.
She took a great fancy to Lucian, which was just as well, seeing what was the object of his visit, and complacently watched the growing attachment between the handsome young couple, who seemed so suited to one another.
But her duties as chaperon were nominal, for when not pottering about the garden she was knitting in a snug corner, and when knitting failed to interest her she slumbered quietly, in defiance of the etiquette which should have compelled her to make a third in the conversation of her young friends.