So they were married; but wherever they went they passed as Mr. and Mrs. Lydiard, the maiden name of Diana. The marriage was duly registered in his name in the book of the little Jersey church, and an attested copy of it was lodged with the incumbent who performed the ceremony.
Arthur Tresilian took his girl-wife to the Continent, as he could then with a safe conscience write home for remittances.
Amid these wanderings two boys were born to them--Arthur and Ralf, whom she so named after her father, and each boy seemed a reproduction of either parent: for the eldest had all the personal attributes of the father--was bluff, bold, and manly; while the latter had all the dark beauty and gentleness of his mother. On the education of these boys Arthur Tresilian spared nothing, and both were already highly accomplished. Everywhere they had the best masters money could procure; but no profession was decided on for Arthur, the eldest, as the _false name_ and the expected wealth raised alike doubts and objections as to what should be done.
Diana Lydiard was the daughter of a tradesman--true; but amid the love she bore her husband, and the luxuries by which his wealth enabled him to surround her, she had ever felt her position to be anomalous, and with it the pride that struggled against shame--a shame that at times became blended with vague fear and sorrow for the future.
And now for the last three years the secret family of Arthur Tresilian had been settled in a little sequestered spot named Carn Spern, near Trevose Head, a rocky cape that juts into the sea westward of Padstow, and some thirty miles or so distant from Restormel Court. There he was known simply as Mr. Lydiard, and by the frequency of his absence was supposed to be a commercial traveller; but as the little family lived quietly, made few acquaintances, and incurred no debts, their lives glided by unnoticed and uncared for by all save the poor, to whom the charity of Mrs. Lydiard was a proverb, and something more solid too.
Through some unseen agency a whisper of an alleged improper connection formed by Arthur did reach the ears of Basset Tresilian, and through him, those of old Sir Launcelot, and in the fury and indignation of the latter, his lofty and aristocratic scorn, he had a foretaste of what awaited him, and the three beings he loved most on earth, if the reality became known.
