It was she also who, at a pause in the dancing and at a hint from Mrs.Colwood, insisted on making Diana sing, to the grand piano which had been pushed into a corner of the hall.

And when the singing, helped by the looks and personality of the singer, had added to the girl's success, Lady Niton sat fanning herself in reflected triumph, appealing to the spectators on all sides for applause.

The topics that Diana fled from, Lady Niton took up; and when Mrs.
Fotheringham, bewildered by an avalanche of words, would say--"Give me time, please, Lady Niton--I must think!"-- Lady Niton would reply, coolly--"Not unless you're accustomed to it"; while she finally capped her misdeeds by insisting that it was no good to say Mr.Barton had a warm heart if he were without that much more useful possession--a narrow mind.
Thus buttressed and befriended on almost all sides, Diana drank her cup of pleasure.

Once in an interval between two dances, as she passed on Oliver Marsham's arm, close to Lady Lucy, that lady put up her frail old hand, and gently touched Diana's.

"Do not overtire yourself, my dear!" she said, with effusion; and Oliver, looking down, knew very well what his mother's rare effusion meant, if Diana did not.