A sudden impulse made Diana fly after her.
"Do let me help you!" she said, shyly.
Marion Vincent smiled, and put her hand in the girl's arm.
"How do people manage to live at all in these big houses, and with dinner-parties every night!" she said, laughing.

"After a day in the East End I am never half so tired." She was indeed so pale that Diana was rather frightened, and remembering that in the afternoon she had seen Miss Vincent descend from an upper floor, she offered a rest in her own room, which was close by, before the evidently lame woman attempted further stairs.
Marion Vincent hesitated a moment, then accepted.

Diana hurried up a chair to the fire, installed her there, and herself sat on the floor watching her guest with some anxiety.
Yet, as she did so, she felt a certain antagonism.

The face, of which the eyes were now closed, was nobly grave.

The expression of its deeply marked lines appealed to her heart.