They suggested something, but so vaguely that Diana could find no words for it: a note of desecration, of cheapening--a breath of dishonor.

It was as though a mourner, shut in for years with sacred memories, became suddenly aware that all the time, in a sordid world outside, these very memories had been the sport of an unkind and insolent chatter that besmirched them.
Her mother! In the silence of the wood the girl's slender figure stiffened itself against an attacking thought.

In her inmost mind she knew well that it was from her mother--and her mother's death--that all the strangeness of the past descended.

But yet the death and grief she remembered had never presented themselves to her as they appear to other bereaved ones.

Why had nobody ever spoken to her of her mother in her childhood and youth ?--neither father, nor nurses, nor her old French governess?
Why had she no picture--no relics--no letters?
In the box of "Sparling Papers" there was nothing that related to Mrs.Sparling; that she knew, for her father had abruptly told her so not long before his death.