He had returned to Diana's neighborhood, and stood leaning over a chair beside her, listening to her conversation with Mr.Ferrier.
His sister, Mrs.Fotheringham, was not content to listen.

Diana's impressions of the country-side, which presently caught her ear, evidently roused her pugnacity.

She threw herself on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised.

All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish--bores, in fact, of the first water.

And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in.