So she was sitting by the window this afternoon, in a mood which had in it neither simplicity nor joy. She was conscious of a certain dull and baffled feeling—a sense of humiliation—which hurt. Moreover, the scene of sordid horror she had gone through haunted her imagination perpetually. She was unstrung, and the world weighed upon her—the pity, the ugliness, the confusion of it.

* * * * *

The muslin curtain beside her suddenly swelled out in a draught of air, and she put out her hand quickly to catch the French window lest it should swing to. Some one had opened the door of the room.

"Did I blow you out of window?" said a girl's voice; and there behind her, in a half-timid attitude, stood Betty Macdonald, a vision of white muslin, its frills and capes a little tossed by the wind, the pointed face and golden hair showing small and elf-like under the big shady hat.

"Oh, do come in!" said Marcella, shyly; "Lady Winterbourne will be in directly."

"So Panton told me," said Betty, sinking down on a high stool beside Marcella's chair, and taking off her hat; "and Panton doesn't tell me any stories now—I've trained him. I wonder how many he tells in the day? Don't you think there will be a special little corner of purgatory for London butlers? I hope Panton will get off easy!"

Then she laid her sharp chin on her tiny hand, and studied Marcella. Miss Boyce was in the light black dress that Minta approved; her pale face and delicate hands stood out from it with a sort of noble emphasis. When Betty had first heard of Marcella Boyce as the heroine of a certain story, she had thought of her as a girl one would like to meet, if only to prick her somehow for breaking the heart of a good man. Now that she saw her close she felt herself near to falling in love with her. Moreover, the incident of the fight and of Miss Boyce's share in it had thrilled a creature all susceptibility and curiosity; and the little merry thing would sit hushed, looking at the heroine of it, awed by the thought of what a girl only two years older than herself must have already seen of sin and tragedy, envying her with all her heart, and by contrast honesty despising—for the moment—that very happy and popular person, Betty Macdonald!

"Do you like being alone?" she asked Marcella, abruptly.

Marcella coloured.

"Well, I was just getting very tired of my own company," she said. "I was very glad to see you come in."

"Were you?" said Betty, joyously, with a little gleam in her pretty eyes. Then suddenly the golden head bent forward. "May I kiss you?" she said, in the wistfullest, eagerest voice.

Marcella smiled, and, laying her hand on Betty's, shyly drew her.

"That's better!" said Betty, with a long breath. "That's the second milestone; the first was when I saw you on the Terrace. Couldn't you mark all your friendships by little white stones? I could. But the horrid thing is when you have to mark them back again! Nobody ever did that with you!"

"Because I have no friends," said Marcella, quickly; then, when Betty clapped her hands in amazement at such a speech, she added quickly with a smile, "except a few I make poultices for."

"There!" said Betty, enviously, "to think of being really wanted—for poultices—or, anything! I never was wanted in my life! When I die they'll put on my poor little grave—

"She's buried here—that hizzie Betty; She did na gude—so don't ee fret ye!

"—oh, there they are!"—she ran to the window—"Lady Winterbourne and Ermyntrude. Doesn't it make you laugh to see Lady Winterbourne doing her duties? She gets into her carriage after lunch as one might mount a tumbril. I expect to hear her tell the coachman to drive to the scaffold at Hyde Park Corner.' She looks the unhappiest woman in England—and all the time Ermyntrude declares she likes it, and wouldn't do without her season for the world! She gives Ermyntrude a lot of trouble, but she is a dear—a naughty dear—and mothers are such a chance! Ermyntrude! where did you get that bonnet? You got it without me—and my feelings won't stand it!"

Lady Ermyntrude and Betty threw themselves on a sofa together, chattering and laughing. Lady Winterbourne came up to Marcella and enquired after her. She was still slowly drawing off her gloves, when the drawing-room door opened again.

"Tea, Panton!" said Lady Winterbourne, without turning her head, and in the tone of Lady Macbeth. But the magnificent butler took no notice.

"Lady Selina Farrell!" he announced in a firm voice.

Lady Winterbourne gave a nervous start; then, with the air of a person cut out of wood, made a slight advance, and held out a limp hand to her visitor.

"Won't you sit down?" she said.

Anybody who did not know her would have supposed that she had never seen Lady Selina before. In reality she and the Alresfords were cousins. But she did not like Lady Selina, and never took any pains to conceal it—a fact which did not in the smallest degree interfere with the younger lady's performance of her family duties.

Lady Selina found a seat with easy aplomb, put up her bejewelled fingers to draw off her veil, and smilingly prepared herself for tea. She enquired of Betty how she was enjoying herself, and of Lady Ermyntrude how her husband and baby in the country were getting on without her. The tone of this last question made the person addressed flush and draw herself up. It was put as banter, but certainly conveyed that Lady Ermyntrude was neglecting her family for the sake of dissipations. Betty meanwhile curled herself up in a corner of the sofa, letting one pretty foot swing over the other, and watching the new-comer with a malicious eye, which instantly and gleefully perceived that Lady Selina thought her attitude ungraceful.

Marcella, of course, was greeted and condoled with—Lady Selina, however, had seen her since the tragedy—and then Lady Winterbourne, after every item of her family news, and every symptom of her own and her husband's health had been rigorously enquired into, began to attempt some feeble questions of her own—how, for instance, was Lord Alresford's gout?

Lady Selina replied that he was well, but much depressed by the political situation. No doubt Ministers had done their best, but he thought two or three foolish mistakes had been made during the session. Certain blunders ought at all hazards to have been avoided. He feared that the party and the country might have to pay dearly for them. But he had done his best.

Lady Winterbourne, whose eldest son was a junior whip, had been the recipient, since the advent of the new Cabinet, of so much rejoicing over the final exclusion of "that vain old idiot, Alresford," from any further chances of muddling a public department, that Lady Selina's talk made her at once nervous and irritable. She was afraid of being indiscreet; yet she longed to put her visitor down. In her odd disjointed way, too, she took a real interest in politics. Her craving idealist nature—mated with a cheery sportsman husband who laughed at her, yet had made her happy—was always trying to reconcile the ends of eternal justice with the measures of the Tory party. It was a task of Sisyphus; but she would not let it alone.

"I do not agree with you," she said with cold shyness in answer to Lady Selina's concluding laments—"I am told—our people say—we are doing very well—except that the session is likely to be dreadfully long."

Lady Selina raised both her eyebrows and her shoulders.

"Dear Lady Winterbourne! you really mean it?" she said with the indulgent incredulity one shows to the simple-minded—"But just think! The session will go on, every one says, till quite the end of September. Isn't that enough of itself to make a party discontented? All our big measures are in dreadful arrears. And my father believes so much of the friction might have been avoided. He is all in favour of doing more for Labour. He thinks these Labour men might have been easily propitiated without anything revolutionary. It's no good supposing that these poor starving people will wait for ever!"

"Oh!" said Lady Winterbourne, and sat staring at her visitor. To those who knew its author well, the monosyllable could not have been more expressive. Lady Winterbourne's sense of humour had no voice, but inwardly it was busy with Lord Alresford as the "friend of the poor." Alresford!—the narrowest and niggardliest tyrant alive, so far as his own servants and estate were concerned. And as to Lady Selina, it was well known to the Winterbourne cousinship that she could never get a maid to stay with her six months.

"What did you think of Mr. Wharton's speech the other night?" said Lady Selina, bending suavely across the tea-table to Marcella.

"It was very interesting," said Marcella, stiffly—perfectly conscious that the name had pricked the attention of everybody in the room, and angry with her cheeks for reddening.

"Wasn't it?" said Lady Selina, heartily. "You can't do those things, of course! But you should show every sympathy to the clever enthusiastic young men—the men like that—shouldn't you? That's what my father says. He says we've got to win them. We've got somehow to make them feel us their friends—or we shall all go to ruin! They have the voting power—and we are the party of education, of refinement. If we can only lead that kind of man to see the essential justice of our cause—and at the same time give them our help—in reason—show them we want to be their friends—wouldn't it be best? I don't know whether I put it rightly—you know so much about these things! But we can't undo '67—can we? We must get round it somehow—mustn't we? And my father thinks Ministers so unwise! But perhaps"—and Lady Selina drew herself back with a more gracious smile than ever—"I ought not to be saying these things to you—of course I know you used to think us Conservatives very bad people—but Mr. Wharton tells me, perhaps you don't think quite so hardly of us as you used?"

Lady Selina's head in its Paris bonnet fell to one side in a gentle interrogative sort of way.

Something roused in Marcella.

"Our cause?" she repeated, while the dark eye dilated—"I wonder what you mean?"

"Well, I mean—" said Lady Selina, seeking for the harmless word, in the face of this unknown explosive-looking girl—"I mean, of course, the cause of the educated—of the people who have made the country."

"I think," said Marcella, quietly, "you mean the cause of the rich, don't you?"

"Marcella!" cried Lady Winterbourne, catching at the tone rather than words—"I thought you didn't feel like that any more—not about the distance between the poor and the rich—and our tyranny—and its being hopeless—and the poor always hating us—I thought you changed."

And forgetting Lady Selina, remembering only the old talks at Mellor, Lady Winterbourne bent forward and laid an appealing hand on Marcella's arm.

Marcella turned to her with an odd look.

"If you only knew," she said, "how much more possible it is to think well of the rich, when you are living amongst the poor!"

"Ah! you must be at a distance from us to do us justice?" enquired Lady Selina, settling her bracelets with a sarcastic lip.

"I must," said Marcella, looking, however, not at her, but at Lady Winterbourne. "But then, you see,"—she caressed her friend's hand with a smile—"it is so easy to throw some people into opposition!"

"Dreadfully easy!" sighed Lady Winterbourne.

The flush mounted again in the girl's cheek. She hesitated, then felt driven to explanations.

"You see—oddly enough"—she pointed away for an instant to the north-east through the open window—"it's when I'm over there—among the people who have nothing—that it does me good to remember that there are persons who live in James Street, Buckingham Gate!"

"My dear! I don't understand," said Lady Winterbourne, studying her with her most perplexed and tragic air.

"Well, isn't it simple?" said Marcella, still holding her hand and looking up at her. "It comes, I suppose, of going about all day in those streets and houses, among people who live in one room—with not a bit of prettiness anywhere—and no place to be alone in, or to rest in. I come home and gloat over all the beautiful dresses and houses and gardens I can think of!"

"But don't you hate the people that have them?" said Betty, again on her stool, chin in hand.

"No! it doesn't seem to matter to me then what kind of people they are. And I don't so much want to take from them and give to the others. I only want to be sure that the beauty, and the leisure, and the freshness are somewhere—not lost out of the world."

"How strange!—in a life like yours—that one should think so much of the ugliness of being poor—more than of suffering or pain," said Betty, musing.

"Well—in some moods—you do—I do!" said Marcella; "and it is in those moods that I feel least resentful of wealth. If I say to myself that the people who have all the beauty and the leisure are often selfish and cruel—after all they die out of their houses and their parks, and their pictures, in time, like the shell-fish out of its shell. The beauty and the grace which they created or inherited remain. And why should one be envious of them personally? They have had the best chances in the world and thrown them away—are but poor animals at the end! At any rate I can't hate them—they seem to have a function—when I am moving about Drury Lane!" she added with a smile.

"But how can one help being ashamed?" said Lady Winterbourne, as her eyes wandered over her pretty room, and she felt herself driven somehow into playing devil's advocate.

"No! No!" said Marcella, eagerly, "don't be ashamed! As to the people who make beauty more beautiful—who share it and give it—I often feel as if I could say to them on my knees, Never, never be ashamed merely of being rich—of living with beautiful things, and having time to enjoy them! One might as well be ashamed of being strong rather than a cripple, or having two eyes rather than one!"

"Oh, but, my dear!" cried Lady Winterbourne, piteous and bewildered, "when one has all the beauty and the freedom—and other people must die without any—"

"Oh, I know, I know!" said Marcella, with a quick gesture of despair; "that's what makes the world the world. And one begins with thinking it can be changed—that it must and shall be changed!—that everybody could have wealth—could have beauty and rest, and time to think, that is to say—if things were different—if one could get Socialism—if one could beat down the capitalist—if one could level down, and level up, till everybody had 200 l. a year. One turns and fingers the puzzle all day long. It seems so near coming right—one guesses a hundred ways in which it might be done! Then after a while one stumbles upon doubt—one begins to see that it never will, never can come right—not in any mechanical way of that sort—that that isn't what was meant!"

Her voice dropped drearily. Betty Macdonald gazed at her with a girl's nascent adoration. Lady Winterbourne was looking puzzled and unhappy, but absorbed like Betty in Marcella. Lady Selina, studying the three with smiling composure, was putting on her veil, with the most careful attention to fringe and hairpins. As for Ermyntrude, she was no longer on the sofa; she had risen noiselessly, finger on lip, almost at the beginning of Marcella's talk, to greet a visitor. She and he were standing at the back of the room, in the opening of the conservatory, unnoticed by any of the group in the bow window.

"Don't you think," said Lady Selina, airily, her white fingers still busy with her bonnet, "that it would be a very good thing to send all the Radicals—the well-to-do Radicals I mean—to live among the poor? It seems to teach people such extremely useful things!"

Marcella straightened herself as though some one had touched her impertinently. She looked round quickly.

"I wonder what you suppose it teaches?"

"Well," said Lady Selina, a little taken aback and hesitating; "well! I suppose it teaches a person to be content—and not to cry for the moon!"

"You think," said Marcella, slowly, "that to live among the poor can teach any one—any one that's human—to be content!"

Her manner had the unconscious intensity of emphasis, the dramatic force that came to her from another blood than ours. Another woman could hardly have fallen into such a tone without affectation—without pose. At this moment certainly Betty, who was watching her, acquitted her of either, and warmly thought her a magnificent creature.

Lady Selina's feeling simply was that she had been roughly addressed by her social inferior. She drew herself up.

"As I understand you," she said stiffly, "you yourself confessed that to live with poverty had led you to think more reasonably of wealth."

Suddenly a movement of Lady Ermyntrude's made the speaker turn her head. She saw the pair at the end of the room, looked astonished, then smiled.

"Why, Mr. Raeburn! where have you been hiding yourself during this great discussion? Most consoling, wasn't it—on the whole—to us West End people?"

She threw back a keen glance at Marcella. Lady Ermyntrude and Raeburn came forward.

"I made him be quiet," said Ermyntrude, not looking, however, quite at her ease; "it would have been a shame to interrupt."

"I think so, indeed!" said Lady Selina, with emphasis. "Good-bye, dear Lady Winterbourne; good-bye, Miss Boyce! You have comforted me very much! Of course one is sorry for the poor; but it is a great thing to hear from anybody who knows as much about it as you do, that—after all—it is no crime—to possess a little!"

She stood smiling, looking from the girl to the man—then, escorted by Raeburn in his very stiffest manner, she swept out of the room.

When Aldous came back, with a somewhat slow and hesitating step, he approached Marcella, who was standing silent by the window, and asked after the lame arm. He was sorry, he said, to see that it was still in its sling. His tone was a little abrupt. Only Lady Winterbourne saw the quick nervousness of the eyes,

"Oh! thank you," said Marcella, coldly, "I shall get back to work next week."

She stooped and took up her book.

"I must please go and write some letters," she said, in answer to Lady Winterbourne's flurried look.

And she walked away. Betty and Lady Ermyntrude also went to take off their things.

"Aldous!" said Lady Winterbourne, holding out her hand to him.

He took it, glanced unwillingly at her wistful, agitated face, pressed the hand, and let it go.

"Isn't it sad," said his old friend, unable to help herself, "to see her battling like this with life—with thought—all alone? Isn't it sad, Aldous?"

"Yes," he said. Then, after a pause, "Why doesn't she go home? My patience gives out when I think of Mrs. Boyce."

"Oh! it isn't Mrs. Boyce's fault," said Lady Winterbourne, hopelessly. "And I don't know why one should be sorry for her particularly—why one should want her to change her life again. She does it splendidly. Only I never, never feel that she is a bit happy in it."

It was Hallin's cry over again.

He said nothing for a moment; then he forced a smile.

"Well! neither you nor I can help it, can we?" he said. The grey eyes looked at her steadily—bitterly. Lady Winterbourne, with the sensation of one who, looking for softness, has lit on granite, changed the subject.

Meanwhile, Marcella upstairs was walking restlessly up and down. She could hardly keep herself from rushing off—back to Brown's Buildings at once. He in the room while she was saying those things! Lady Selina's words burnt in her ears. Her morbid, irritable sense was all one vibration of pride and revolt. Apology—appeal—under the neatest comedy guise! Of course!—now that Lord-Maxwell was dying, and the ill-used suitor was so much the nearer to his earldom. A foolish girl had repented her of her folly—was anxious to make those concerned understand—what more simple?

Her nerves were strained and out of gear. Tears came in a proud, passionate gush; and she must needs allow herself the relief of them.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Lady Selina had gone home full of new and uncomfortable feelings. She could not get Marcella Boyce out of her head—neither as she had just seen her, under the wing of "that foolish woman, Madeleine Winterbourne," nor as she had seen her first, on the terrace with Harry Wharton. It did not please Lady Selina to feel herself in any way eclipsed or even rivalled by such an unimportant person as this strange and ridiculous girl. Yet it crossed her mind with a stab, as she lay resting on the sofa in her little sitting-room before dinner, that never in all her thirty-five years had any human being looked into her face with the same alternations of eagerness and satisfied pleasure she had seen on Harry Wharton's, as he and Miss Boyce strolled the terrace together—nor even with such a look as that silly baby Betty Macdonald had put on, as she sat on the stool at the heroine's feet.

There was to be a small dinner-party at Alresford House that night. Wharton was to be among the guests. He was fast becoming one of the habitues of the house, and would often stay behind to talk to Lady Selina when the guests were gone, and Lord Alresford was dozing peacefully in a deep arm-chair.

Lady Selina lay still in the evening light, and let her mind, which worked with extraordinary shrewdness and force in the grooves congenial to it, run over some possibilities of the future.

She was interrupted by the entrance of her maid, who, with the quickened breath and heightened colour she could not repress when speaking to her formidable mistress, told her that one of the younger housemaids was very ill. Lady Selina enquired, found that the doctor who always attended the servants had been sent for, and thought that the illness might turn to rheumatic fever.

"Oh, send her off to the hospital at once!" said Lady Selina. "Let Mrs. Stewart see Dr. Briggs first thing in the morning, and make arrangements. You understand?"

The girl hesitated, and the candles she was lighting showed that she had been crying.

"If your ladyship would but let her stay," she said timidly, "we'd all take our turns at nursing her. She comes from Ireland, perhaps you'll remember, my lady. She's no friends in London, and she's frightened to death of going to the hospital."

"That's nonsense!" said Lady Selina, sternly. "Do you think I can have all the work of the house put out because some one is ill? She might die even—one never knows. Just tell Mrs. Stewart to arrange with her about her wages, and to look out for somebody else at once."

The girl's mouth set sullenly as she went about her work—put out the shining satin dress, the jewels, the hairpins, the curling-irons, the various powders and cosmetics that were wanted for Lady Selina's toilette, and all the time there was ringing in her ears the piteous cry of a little Irish girl, clinging like a child to her only friend: "O Marie! dear Marie! do get her to let me stay—I'll do everything the doctor tells me—I'll make haste and get well—I'll give no trouble. And it's all along of the work—and the damp up in these rooms—the doctor said so."

An hour later Lady Selina was in the stately drawing-room of Alresford House, receiving her guests. She was out of sorts and temper, and though Wharton arrived in due time, and she had the prospect to enliven her during dinner—when he was of necessity parted from her by people of higher rank—of a tete-a-tete with him before the evening was over, the dinner went heavily. The Duke on her right hand, and the Dean on her left, were equally distasteful to her. Neither food nor wine had savour; and once, when in an interval of talk she caught sight of her father's face and form at the further end, growing more vacant and decrepit week by week, she was seized with a sudden angry pang of revolt and repulsion. Her father wearied and disgusted her. Life was often triste and dull in the great house. Yet, when the old man should have found his grave, she would be a much smaller person than she was now, and the days would be so much the more tedious.

Wharton, too, showed less than his usual animation. She said to herself at dinner that he had the face of a man in want of sleep. His young brilliant look was somewhat tarnished, and there was worry in the restless eye. And, indeed, she knew that things had not been going so favourably for him in the House of late—that the stubborn opposition of the little group of men led by Wilkins was still hindering that concentration of the party and definition of his own foremost place in it which had looked so close and probable a few weeks before. She supposed he had been exhausting himself, too, over that shocking Midland strike. The Clarion had been throwing itself into the battle of the men with a monstrous violence, for which she had several times reproached him.

When all the guests had gone but Wharton, and Lord Alresford, duly placed for the sake of propriety in his accustomed chair, was safely asleep, Lady Selina asked what was the matter.

"Oh, the usual thing!" he said, as he leant against the mantelpiece beside her. "The world's a poor place, and my doll's stuffed with sawdust. Did you ever know any doll that wasn't?"

She looked up at him a moment without speaking.

"Which means," she said, "that you can't get your way in the House?"

"No," said Wharton, meditatively, looking down at his boots. "No—not yet."

"You think you will get it some day?"

He raised his eyes.

"Oh yes!" he said; "oh dear, yes!—some day."

She laughed.

"You had better come over to us."

"Well, there is always that to think of, isn't there? You can't deny you want all the new blood you can get!"

"If you only understood your moment and your chance," she said quickly, "you would make the opportunity and do it at once."

He looked at her aggressively.

"How easy it comes to you Tories to rat!" he said.

"Thank you! it only means that we are the party of common sense. Well, I have been talking to your Miss Boyce."

He started.

"Where?"

"At Lady Winterbourne's. Aldous Raeburn was there. Your beautiful Socialist was very interesting—and rather surprising. She talked of the advantages of wealth; said she had been converted—by living among the poor—had changed her mind, in fact, on many things. We were all much edified—including Mr. Raeburn. How long do you suppose that business will remain 'off'? To my mind I never saw a young woman more eager to undo a mistake." Then she added slowly, "The accounts of Lord Maxwell get more and more unsatisfactory."

Wharton stared at her with sparkling eyes. "How little you know her!" he said, not without a tone of contempt.

"Oh! very well," said Lady Selina, with the slightest shrug of her white shoulders.

He turned to the mantelpiece and began to play with some ornaments upon it.

"Tell me what she said," he enquired presently.

Lady Selina gave her own account of the conversation. Wharton recovered himself.

"Dear me!" he said, when she stopped. "Yes—well—we may see another act. Who knows? Well, good-night, Lady Selina."

She gave him her hand with her usual aristocrat's passivity, and he went. But it was late indeed that night before she ceased to speculate on what the real effect of her words had been upon him.

As for Wharton, on his walk home he thought of Marcella Boyce and of Raeburn with a certain fever of jealous vanity which was coming, he told himself, dangerously near to passion. He did not believe Lady Selina, but nevertheless he felt that her news might drive him into rash steps he could ill afford, and had indeed been doing his best to avoid. Meanwhile it was clear to him that the mistress of Alresford House had taken an envious dislike to Marcella. How plain she had looked to-night in spite of her gorgeous dress! and how intolerable Lord Alresford grew!



CHAPTER XII.

But what right had Wharton to be thinking of such irrelevant matters as women and love-making at all? He had spoken of public worries to Lady Selina. In reality his public prospects in themselves were, if anything, improved. It was his private affairs that were rushing fast on catastrophe, and threatening to drag the rest with them.

He had never been so hard pressed for money in his life. In the first place his gambling debts had mounted up prodigiously of late. His friends were tolerant and easy-going. But the more tolerant they were the more he was bound to frequent them. And his luck for some time had been monotonously bad. Before long these debts must be paid, and some of them—to a figure he shrank from dwelling upon—were already urgent.

Then as to the Clarion, it became every week a heavier burden. The expenses of it were enormous; the returns totally inadequate. Advertisements were falling off steadily; and whether the working cost were cut down, or whether a new and good man like Louis Craven, whose letters from the strike district were being now universally read, were put on, the result financially seemed to be precisely the same. It was becoming even a desperate question how the weekly expenses were to be met; so that Wharton's usual good temper now deserted him entirely as soon as he had crossed the Clarion threshold; bitterness had become the portion of the staff, and even the office boys walked in gloom.

Yet, at the same time, withdrawing from the business, was almost as difficult as carrying it on. There were rumours in the air which had, already seriously damaged the paper as a saleable concern. Wharton, indeed, saw no prospect whatever of selling except at ruinous loss. Meanwhile, to bring the paper to an abrupt end would have not only precipitated a number of his financial obligations; it would have been politically, a dangerous confession of failure made at a very critical moment. For what made the whole thing the more annoying was that the Clarion had never been so important politically, never so much read by the persons on whom Wharton's parliamentary future depended, as it was at this moment. The advocacy of the Damesley strike had been so far a stroke of business for Wharton as a Labour Member.

It was now the seventh week of the strike, and Wharton's "leaders," Craven's letters from the seat of war, and the Clarion strike fund, which articles and letters had called into existence, were as vigorous as ever. The struggle itself had fallen into two chapters. In the first the metal-workers concerned, both men and women, had stood out for the old wages unconditionally and had stoutly rejected all idea of arbitration. At the end of three or four weeks, however, when grave suffering had declared itself among an already half-starved population, the workers had consented to take part in the appointment of a board of conciliation. This board, including the workmen's delegates, overawed by the facts of foreign competition as they were disclosed by the masters, recommended terms which would have amounted to a victory for the employers.

The award was no sooner known in the district than the passionate indignation of the great majority of the workers knew no bounds. Meetings were held everywhere; the men's delegates at the board were thrown over, and Craven, who with his new wife was travelling incessantly over the whole strike area, wrote a letter to the Clarion on the award which stated the men's case with extreme ability, was immediately backed up by Wharton in a tremendous "leader," and was received among the strikers with tears almost of gratitude and enthusiasm.

Since then all negotiations had been broken off. The Clarion had gone steadily against the masters, against the award, against further arbitration. The theory of the "living wage," of which more recent days have heard so much, was preached in other terms, but with equal vigour; and the columns of the Clarion bore witness day by day in the long lists of subscriptions to the strike fund, to the effects of its eloquence on the hearts and pockets of Englishmen.

Meanwhile there were strange rumours abroad. It was said that the trade was really on the eve of a complete and striking revolution in its whole conditions—could this labour war be only cleared out of the way. The smaller employers had been for long on the verge of ruin; and the larger men, so report had it, were scheming a syndicate on the American plan to embrace the whole industry, cut down the costs of production, and regulate the output.

But for this large capital would be wanted. Could capital be got? The state of things in the trade, according to the employers, had been deplorable for years; a large part of the market had been definitely forfeited, so they declared, for good, to Germany and Belgium. It would take years before even a powerful syndicate could work itself into a thoroughly sound condition. Let the men accept the award of the conciliation board; let there be some stable and reasonable prospect of peace between masters and men, say, for a couple of years; and a certain group of bankers would come forward; and all would be well. The men under the syndicate would in time get more than their old wage. But the award first; otherwise the plan dropped, and the industry must go its own way to perdition.

"'Will you walk into my parlour?'" said Wharton, scornfully, to the young Conservative member who, with a purpose, was explaining these things to him in the library of the House of Commons, "the merest trap! and, of course, the men will see it so. Who is to guarantee them even the carrying through, much less the success, of your precious syndicate? And, in return for your misty millennium two years hence, the men are to join at once in putting the employers in a stronger position than ever? Thank you! The 'rent of ability' in the present state of things is, no doubt, large. But in this particular case the Clarion will go on doing its best—I promise you—to nibble some of it away!"

The Conservative member rose in indignation.

"I should be sorry to have as many starving people on my conscience as you'll have before long!" he said as he took up his papers.

At that moment Denny's rotund and square-headed figure passed along the corridor, to which the library door stood open.

"Well, if I thrive upon it as well as Denny does, I shall do!" returned Wharton, with his usual caustic good-humour, as his companion departed.

And it delighted him to think as he walked home that Denny, who had again of late made himself particularly obnoxious in the House of Commons, on two or three occasions, to the owner of the Clarion, had probably instigated the quasi-overtures he had just rejected, and must be by now aware of their result.

Then he sent for Craven to come and confer with him.

Craven accordingly came up from the Midlands, pale, thin, and exhausted, with the exertions and emotions of seven weeks' incessant labour. Yet personally Wharton found him, as before, dry and unsympathetic; and disliked him, and his cool, ambiguous manner, more than ever. As to the strike, however, they came to a complete understanding. The Clarion, or rather the Clarion fund, which was doing better and better, held the key of the whole situation. If that fund could be maintained, the men could hold out. In view of the possible formation of the syndicate, Craven denounced the award with more fierceness than ever, maintaining the redoubled importance of securing the men's terms before the syndicate was launched. Wharton promised him with glee that he should be supported to the bitter end.

If, that is to say—a proviso he did not discuss with Craven—the Clarion itself could be kept going. In August a large sum, obtained two years before on the security of new "plant," would fall due. The time for repayment had already been extended; and Wharton had ascertained that no further extension was possible.

Well! bankruptcy would be a piquant interlude in his various social and political enterprises! How was it to be avoided? He had by now plenty of rich friends in the City or elsewhere, but none, as he finally decided, likely to be useful to him at the present moment. For the amount of money that he required was large—larger, indeed, than he cared to verify with any strictness, and the security that he could offer, almost nil.

As to friends in the City, indeed, the only excursion of a business kind that he had made into those regions since his election was now adding seriously to his anxieties—might very well turn out, unless the matter were skilfully managed, to be one of the blackest spots on his horizon.

In the early days of his parliamentary life, when, again, mostly for the Clarion's sake, money happened to be much wanted, he had become director of what promised to be an important company, through the interest and good nature of a new and rich acquaintance, who had taken a liking to the young member. The company had been largely "boomed," and there had been some very profitable dealing in the original shares. Wharton had made two or three thousand pounds, and contributed both point and finish to some of the early prospectuses.

Then, after six months, he had withdrawn from the Board, under apprehensions that had been gradually realised with alarming accuracy. Things, indeed, had been going very wrong indeed; there were a number of small investors; and the annual meeting of the company, to be held now in some ten days, promised a storm. Wharton discovered, partly to his own amazement, for he was a man who quickly forgot, that during his directorate he had devised or sanctioned matters that were not at all likely to commend themselves to the shareholders, supposing the past were really sifted. The ill-luck of it was truly stupendous; for on the whole he had kept himself financially very clean since he had become a member; having all through a jealous eye to his political success.

* * * * *

As to the political situation, nothing could be at once more promising or more anxious!

An important meeting of the whole Labour group had been fixed for August 10, by which time it was expected that a great measure concerning Labour would be returned from the House of Lords with highly disputable amendments. The last six weeks of the session would be in many ways more critical for Labour than its earlier months had been; and it would be proposed by Bennett, at the meeting on the 10th, to appoint a general chairman of the party, in view of a campaign which would fill the remainder of the session and strenuously occupy the recess.

That Bennett would propose the name of the member for West Brookshire was perfectly well known to Wharton and his friends. That the nomination would meet with the warmest hostility from Wilkins and a small group of followers was also accurately forecast.

To this day, then, Wharton looked forward as to the crisis of his parliamentary fortunes. All his chances, financial or social, must now be calculated with reference to it. Every power, whether of combat or finesse, that he commanded must be brought to bear upon the issue.

What was, however, most remarkable in the man and the situation at the moment was that, through all these gathering necessities, he was by no means continuously anxious or troubled in his mind. During these days of July he gave himself, indeed, whenever he could, to a fatalist oblivion of the annoyances of life, coupled with a passionate pursuit of all those interests where his chances were still good and the omens still with him.

Especially—during the intervals of ambition, intrigue, journalism, and unsuccessful attempts to raise money—had he meditated the beauty of Marcella Boyce and the chances and difficulties of his relation to her. As he saw her less, he thought of her more, instinctively looking to her for the pleasure and distraction that life was temporarily denying him elsewhere.

At the same time, curiously enough, the stress of his financial position was reflected even in what, to himself, at any rate, he was boldly beginning to call his "passion" for her. It had come to his knowledge that Mr. Boyce had during the past year succeeded beyond all expectation in clearing the Mellor estate. He had made skilful use of a railway lately opened on the edge of his property; had sold building land in the neighbourhood of a small country town on the line, within a convenient distance of London; had consolidated and improved several of his farms and relet them at higher rents; was, in fact, according to Wharton's local informant, in a fair way to be some day, if he lived, quite as prosperous as his grandfather, in spite of old scandals and invalidism. Wharton knew, or thought he knew, that he would not live, and that Marcella would be his heiress. The prospect was not perhaps brilliant, but it was something; it affected the outlook.

Although, however, this consideration counted, it was, to do him justice, Marcella, the creature herself, that he desired. But for her presence in his life he would probably have gone heiress-hunting with the least possible delay. As it was, his growing determination to win her, together with his advocacy of the Damesley workers—amply sufficed, during the days that followed his evening talk with Lady Selina, to maintain his own illusions about himself and so to keep up the zest of life.

Yes!—to master and breathe passion into Marcella Boyce, might safely be reckoned on, he thought, to hurry a man's blood. And after it had gone so far between them—after he had satisfied himself that her fancy, her temper, her heart, were all more or less occupied with him—was he to see her tamely recovered by Aldous Raeburn—by the man whose advancing parliamentary position was now adding fresh offence to the old grievance and dislike? No! not without a dash—a throw for it!

For a while, after Lady Selina's confidences, jealous annoyance, together with a certain reckless state of nerves, turned him almost into the pining lover. For he could not see Marcella. She came no more to Mrs. Lane; and the house in James Street was not open to him. He perfectly understood that the Winterbournes did not want to know him.

At last Mrs. Lane, a shrewd little woman with a half contemptuous liking for Wharton, let him know—on the strength of a chance meeting with Lady Ermyntrude—that the Winterbournes would be at the Masterton party on the 26th. They had persuaded Miss Boyce to stay for it, and she would go back to her work the Monday after. Wharton carelessly replied that he did not know whether he would be able to put in an appearance at the Mastertons'. He might be going out of town.

Mrs. Lane looked at him and said, "Oh, really!" with a little laugh.

* * * * *

Lady Masterton was the wife of the Colonial Secretary, and her grand mansion in Grosvenor Square was the principal rival to Alresford House in the hospitalities of the party. Her reception on July 25 was to be the last considerable event of a protracted but now dying season. Marcella, detained in James Street day after day against her will by the weakness of the injured arm and the counsels of her doctor, had at last extracted permission to go back to work on the 27th; and to please Betty Macdonald she had promised to go with the Winterbournes to the Masterton party on the Saturday. Betty's devotion, shyly as she had opened her proud heart to it, had begun to mean a good deal to her. There was balm in it for many a wounded feeling; and, besides, there was the constant, half eager, half painful interest of watching Betty's free and childish ways with Aldous Raeburn, and of speculating upon what would ultimately come out of them.

So, when Betty first demanded to know what she was going to wear, and then pouted over the dress shown her, Marcella submitted humbly to being "freshened up" at the hands of Lady Ermyntrude's maid, bought what Betty told her, and stood still while Betty, who had a genius for such things, chattered, and draped, and suggested.

"I wouldn't make you fashionable for the world!" cried Betty, with a mouthful of pins, laying down masterly folds of lace and chiffon the while over the white satin with which Marcella had provided her. "What was it Worth said to me the other day?—Ce qu'on porte, Mademoiselle? O pas grand'chose!—presque pas de corsage, et pas du tout de manches!'—No, that kind of thing wouldn't suit you. But distinguished you shall be, if I sit up all night to think it out!"

In the end Betty was satisfied, and could hardly be prevented from hugging Marcella there and then, out of sheer delight in her own handiwork, when at last the party emerged from the cloak-room into the Mastertons' crowded hall. Marcella too felt pleasure in the reflections of herself as they passed up the lavishly bemirrored staircase. The chatter about dress in which she had been living for some days had amused and distracted her; for there were great feminine potentialities in her; though for eighteen months she had scarcely given what she wore a thought, and in her pre-nursing days had been wont to waver between a kind of proud neglect, which implied the secret consciousness of beauty, and an occasional passionate desire to look well. So that she played her part to-night very fairly; pinched Betty's arm to silence the elf's tongue; and held herself up as she was told, that Betty's handiwork might look its best. But inwardly the girl's mood was very tired and flat. She was pining for her work; pining even for Minta Hurd's peevish look, and the children to whom she was so easily an earthly providence.

In spite of the gradual emptying of London, Lady Masterton's rooms were very full. Marcella found acquaintances. Many of the people whom she had met at Mrs. Lane's, the two Cabinet Ministers of the House of Commons dinner, Mr. Lane himself—all were glad or eager to recall themselves to her as she stood by Lady Winterbourne, or made her way half absently through the press. She talked, without shyness—she had never been shy, and was perhaps nearer now to knowing what it might mean than she had been as a schoolgirl—but without heart; her black eye wandering meanwhile, as though in quest. There was a gay sprinkling of uniforms in the crowd, for the Speaker was holding a levee, and as it grew late his guests began to set towards Lady Masterton. Betty, who had been turning up her nose at the men she had so far smiled upon, all of whom she declared were either bald or seventy, was a little propitiated by the uniforms; otherwise, she pronounced the party very dull.

"Well, upon my word!" she cried suddenly, in a tone that made Marcella turn upon her. The child was looking very red and very upright—was using her fan with great vehemence, and Frank Leven was humbly holding out his hand to her.

"I don't like being startled," said Betty, pettishly. "Yes, you did startle me—you did—you did! And then you begin to contradict before I've said a word! I'm sure you've been contradicting all the way upstairs—and why don't you say 'How do you do?' to Miss Boyce?"

Frank, looking very happy, but very nervous, paid his respects rather bashfully to Marcella—she laughed to see how Betty's presence subdued him—and then gave himself up wholly to Betty's tender mercies.

Marcella observed them with an eager interest she could not wholly explain to herself. It was clear that all thought of anything or anybody else had vanished for Frank Leven at the sight of Betty. Marcella guessed, indeed knew, that they had not met for some little time; and she was touched by the agitation and happiness on the boy's handsome face. But Betty? what was the secret of her kittenish, teasing ways—or was there any secret? She held her little head very high and chattered very fast—but it was not the same chatter that she gave to Marcella, nor, so far as Marcella could judge, to Aldous Raeburn. New elements of character came out in it. It was self-confident, wilful, imperious. Frank was never allowed to have an opinion; was laughed at before his words were out of his mouth; was generally heckled, played with, and shaken in a way which seemed alternately to enrage and enchant him. In the case of most girls, such a manner would have meant encouragement; but, as it was Betty, no one could be sure. The little thing was a great puzzle to Marcella, who had found unexpected reserves in her. She might talk of her love affairs to Aldous Raeburn; she had done nothing of the sort with her new friend. And in such matters Marcella herself was far more reserved than most modern women.

"Betty!" cried Lady Winterbourne, "I am going on into the next room."

Then in a lower tone she said helplessly to Marcella:

"Do make her come on!"

Marcella perceived that her old friend was in a fidget. Stooping her tall head, she said with a smile:

"But look how she is amusing herself!"

"My dear!—that's just it! If you only knew how her mother—tiresome woman—has talked to me! And the young man has behaved so beautifully till now—has given neither Ermyntrude nor me any trouble."

Was that why Betty was leading him such a life? Marcella wondered,—then suddenly—was seized with a sick distaste for the whole scene—for Betty's love affairs—for her own interest in them—for her own self and personality above all. Her great black eyes gazed straight before them, unseeing, over the crowd, the diamonds, the lights; her whole being gave itself to a quick, blind wrestle with some vague overmastering pain, some despair of life and joy to which she could give no name.

She was roused by Betty's voice:

"Mr. Raeburn! will you tell me who people are? Mr. Leven's no more use than my fan. Just imagine—I asked him who that lady in the tiara is—and he vows he doesn't know! Why, it just seems that when you go to Oxford, you leave the wits you had before, behind! And then—of course"—Betty affected a delicate hesitation—"there's the difficulty of being quite sure that you'll ever get any new ones!—But there—look!—I'm in despair!—she's vanished—and I shall never know!"

"One moment!" said Raeburn, smiling, "and I will take you in pursuit. She has only gone into the tea-room."

His hand touched Marcella's.

"Just a little better," he said, with a sudden change of look, in answer to Lady Winterbourne's question. "The account to-night is certainly brighter. They begged me not to come, or I should have been off some days ago. And next week, I am thankful to say, they will be home."

Why should she be standing there, so inhumanly still and silent?—Marcella asked herself. Why not take courage again—join in—talk—show sympathy? But the words died on her lips. After to-night—thank heaven!—she need hardly see him again.

He asked after herself as usual. Then, just as he was turning away with Betty, he came back to her, unexpectedly.

"I should like to tell you about Hallin," he said gently. "His sister writes to me that she is happier about him, and that she hopes to be able to keep him away another fortnight. They are at Keswick."

For an instant there was pleasure in the implication of common ground, a common interest—here if no-where else. Then the pleasure was lost in the smart of her own strange lack of self-government as she made a rather stupid and awkward reply.

Raeburn's eyes rested on her for a moment. There was in them a flash of involuntary expression, which she did not notice—for she had turned away—which no one saw—except Betty. Then the child followed him to the tea-room, a little pale and pensive.

Marcella looked after them.

In the midst of the uproar about her, the babel of talk fighting against the Hungarian band, which was playing its wildest and loudest in the tea-room, she was overcome by a sudden rush of memory. Her eyes were tracing the passage of those two figures through the crowd; the man in his black court suit, stooping his refined and grizzled head to the girl beside him, or turning every now and then to greet an acquaintance, with the manner—cordial and pleasant, yet never quite gay even when he smiled—that she, Marcella, had begun to notice of late as a new thing; the girl lifting her small face to him, the gold of her hair showing against his velvet sleeve. But the inward sense was busy with a number of other impressions, past, and, as it now seemed, incredible.

The little scene when Aldous had given her the pearls, returned so long ago—why! she could see the fire blazing in the Stone Parlour, feel his arm about her!—the drive home after the Gairsley meeting—that poignant moment in his sitting-room the night of the ball—his face, his anxious, tender face, as she came down the wide stairs of the Court towards him on that terrible evening when she pleaded with him and his grandfather in vain:—had these things, incidents, relations, been ever a real part of the living world? Impossible! Why, there he was—not ten yards from her—and yet more irrevocably separate from her than if the Sahara stretched between them. The note of cold distance in his courteous manner put her further from him than the merest stranger.

Marcella felt a sudden terror rush through her as she blindly followed Lady Winterbourne; her limbs trembled under her; she took advantage of a conversation between her companion and the master of the house to sink down for a moment on a settee, where she felt out of sight and notice.

What was this intolerable sense of loss and folly, this smarting emptiness, this rage with herself and her life? She only knew that whereas the touch, the eye of Aldous Raeburn had neither compelled nor thrilled her, so long as she possessed his whole heart and life—now—that she had no right to either look or caress; now that he had ceased even to regard her as a friend, and was already perhaps making up that loyal and serious mind of his to ask from another woman the happiness she had denied him; now, when it was absurdly too late, she could—

Could what? Passionate, wilful creature that she was!—with that breath of something wild and incalculable surging through the inmost places of the soul, she went through a moment of suffering as she sat pale and erect in her corner—brushed against by silks and satins, chattered across by this person and that—such as seemed to bruise all the remaining joy and ease out of life.

But only a moment! Flesh and blood rebelled. She sprang up from her seat; told herself that she was mad or ill; caught sight of Mr. Lane coming towards them, and did her best by smile and greeting to attract him to her.

"You look very white, my dear Miss Boyce," said that cheerful and fatherly person. "Is it that tiresome arm still? Now, don't please go and be a heroine any more!"



CHAPTER XIII.

Meanwhile, in the tea-room, Betty was daintily sipping her claret-cup, while Aldous stood by her.

"No," said Betty, calmly, looking straight at the lady in the tiara who was standing by the buffet, "she's not beautiful, and I've torn my dress running after her. There's only one beautiful person here to-night!"

Aldous found her a seat, and took one himself beside her, in a corner out of the press. But he did not answer her remark.

"Don't you think so, Mr. Aldous?" said Betty, persisting, but with a little flutter of the pulse.

"You mean Miss Boyce?" he said quietly, as he turned to her.

"Of course!" cried Betty, with a sparkle in her charming eyes; "what is it in her face? It excites me to be near her. One feels that she will just have lived twice as much as the rest of us by the time she comes to the end. You don't mind my talking of her, Mr. Aldous?"

There was an instant's silence on his part. Then he said in a constrained voice, looking away from his companion, "I don't mind it, but I am not going to pretend to you that I find it easy to talk of her."

"It would be a shame of you to pretend anything," said Betty, fervently, "after all I've told you! I confessed all my scrapes to you, turned out all my rubbish bag of a heart—well, nearly all"—she checked herself with a sudden flush—"And you've been as kind to me as any big brother could be. But you're dreadfully lofty, Mr. Aldous! You keep yourself to yourself. I don't think it's fair!"

Aldous laughed.

"My dear Miss Betty, haven't you found out by now that I am a good listener and a bad talker? I don't talk of myself or"—he hesitated—"the things that have mattered most to me—because, in the first place, it doesn't come easy to me—and, in the next, I can't, you see, discuss my own concerns without discussing other people's."

"Oh, good gracious!" said Betty, "what you must have been thinking about me! I declare I'll never tell you anything again!"—and, beating her tiny foot upon the ground, she sat, scarlet, looking down at it.

Aldous made all the smiling excuses he could muster. He had found Betty a most beguiling and attaching little companion, both at the Court in the Easter recess, and during the Italian journey. Her total lack of reserve, or what appeared so, had been first an amazement to him, and then a positive pleasure and entertainment. To make a friend of him—difficult and scrupulous as he was, and now more than ever—a woman must be at the cost of most of the advances. But, after the first evening with him, Betty had made them in profusion, without the smallest demur, though perfectly well aware of her mother's ambitions. There was a tie of cousinship between them, and a considerable difference of age. Betty had decided at once that a mother was a dear old goose, and that great friends she and Aldous Raeburn should be—and, in a sense, great friends they were.

Aldous was still propitiating her, when Lady Winterbourne came into the tea-room, followed by Marcella. The elder lady threw a hurried and not very happy glance at the pair in the corner. Marcella appeared to be in animated talk with a young journalist whom Raeburn knew, and did not look their way.

"Just one thing!" said Betty, bending forward and speaking eagerly in Aldous's ear. "It was all a mistake—wasn't it? Now I know her I feel sure it was. You don't—you don't—really think badly of her?"

Aldous heard her unwillingly. He was looking away from her towards the buffet, when she saw a change in the eyes—a tightening of the lip—a something keen and hostile in the whole face.

"Perhaps Miss Boyce will be less of a riddle to all of us before long!" he said hastily, as though the words escaped him. "Shall we get out of this very uncomfortable corner?"

Betty looked where he had looked, and saw a young man greeting Marcella with a manner so emphatic and intimate, that the journalist had instantly moved out of his way. The young man had a noticeable pile of fair curls above a very white and rounded forehead.

"Who is that talking to Miss Boyce?" she asked of Aldous; "I have seen him, but I can't remember the name."

"That is Mr. Wharton, the member for one of our divisions," said Aldous, as he rose from his chair.

Betty gave a little start, and her brow puckered into a frown. As she too rose, she said resentfully to Aldous:

"Well, you have snubbed me!"

As usual, he could not find the effective or clever thing to say.

"I did not mean to," he replied simply; but Betty, glancing at him, saw something in his face which gripped her heart. A lump rose in her throat.

"Do let's go and find Ermyntrude!" she said.

* * * * *

But Wharton had barely begun his talk with Marcella when a gentleman, on his way to the buffet with a cup to set down, touched him on the arm. Wharton turned in some astonishment and annoyance. He saw a youngish, good-looking man, well known to him as already one of the most important solicitors in London, largely trusted by many rich or eminent persons.

"May I have a word with you presently?" said Mr. Pearson, in a pleasant undertone. "I have something of interest to say to you, and it occurred to me that I might meet you to-night. Excuse my interrupting you."

He glanced with admiration at Marcella, who had turned away.

Wharton had a momentary qualm. Then it struck him that Mr. Pearson's manner was decidedly friendly.

"In a moment," he said. "We might find a corner, I think, in that further room."

He made a motion of the head towards a little boudoir which lay beyond the tea-room.

Mr. Pearson nodded and passed on.

Wharton returned to Marcella, who had fallen back on Frank Leven. At the approach of the member for West Brookshire, Lady Winterbourne and her daughter had moved severely away to the further end of the buffet.

"A tiresome man wants me on business for a moment," he said; then he dropped his voice a little; "but I have been looking forward to this evening, this chance, for days—shall I find you here again in five minutes?"

Marcella, who had flushed brightly, said that would depend on the time and Lady Winterbourne. He hurried away with a little gesture of despair. Frank followed him with a sarcastic eye.

"Any one would think he was prime minister already! I never met him yet anywhere that he hadn't some business on hand. Why does he behave as though he had the world on his shoulders? Your real swells always seem to have nothing to do."

"Do you know so many busy people?" Marcella asked him sweetly.

"Oh, you shan't put me down, Miss Boyce!" said the boy, sulkily thrusting his hands into his pockets. "I am going to work like blazes this winter, if only my dons will let a fellow alone. I say, isn't she ripping to-night—Betty?"

And, pulling his moustache in helpless jealousy and annoyance, he stared at the Winterbourne group across the room, which had been now joined by Aldous Raeburn and Betty, standing side by side.

"What do you want me to say?" said Marcella, with a little cold laugh. "I shall make you worse if I praise her. Please put my cup down."

At the same moment she saw Wharton coming back to her—Mr. Pearson behind him, smiling, and gently twirling the seals of his watch-chain. She was instantly struck by Wharton's look of excitement, and by the manner in which—with a momentary glance aside at the Winterbourne party—he approached her.

"There is such a charming little room in there," he said, stooping his head to her, "and so cool after this heat. Won't you try it?"

The energy of his bright eye took possession of her. He led the way; she followed. Her dress almost brushed Aldous Raeburn as she passed.

He took her into a tiny room. There was no one else there, and he found a seat for her by an open window, where they were almost hidden from view by a stand of flowers.

As he sat down again by her, she saw that a decisive moment had come, and blanched almost to the colour of her dress. Oh! what to do! Her heart cried out vaguely to some power beyond itself for guidance, then gave itself up again to the wayward thirst for happiness.

He took her hand strongly in both his own, and bending towards her as she sat bowered among the scent and colours of the flowers, he made her a passionate declaration. From the first moment that he had seen her under the Chiltern beeches, so he vowed, he had felt in her the supreme, incomparable attraction which binds a man to one woman, and one only. His six weeks under her father's roof had produced in him feelings which he knew to be wrong, without thereby finding in himself any power to check them. They had betrayed him into a mad moment, which he had regretted bitterly because it had given her pain. Otherwise—his voice dropped and shook, his hand pressed hers—"I lived for months on the memory of that one instant." But he had respected her suffering, her struggle, her need for rest of mind and body. For her sake he had gone away into silence; he had put a force upon himself which had alone enabled him to get through his parliamentary work.

Then, with his first sight of her in that little homely room and dress—so changed, but so lovely!—everything—admiration, passion—had revived with double strength. Since that meeting he must have often puzzled her, as he had puzzled himself. His life had been a series of perplexities. He was not his own master; he was the servant of a cause, in which—however foolishly a mocking habit might have led him at times to be-little his own enthusiasms and hers—his life and honour were engaged; and this cause and his part in it had been for long hampered, and all his clearness of vision and judgment dimmed by the pressure of a number of difficulties and worries he could not have discussed with her—worries practical and financial, connected with the Clarion, with the experiments he had been carrying out on his estate, and with other troublesome matters. He had felt a thousand times that his fortunes, political or private, were too doubtful and perilous to allow him to ask any woman to share them.—Then, again, he had seen her—and his resolution, his scruple, had melted in his breast!

Well! there were still troubles in front! But he was no longer cowed by them. In spite of them, he dared now to throw himself at her feet, to ask her to come and share a life of combat and of labour, to bring her beauty and her mind to the joint conduct of a great enterprise. To her a man might show his effort and his toil,—from her he might claim a sympathy it would be vain to ask of any smaller woman.

Then suddenly he broke down. Speech seemed to fail him. Only his eyes—more intense and piercing under their straight brows than she had ever known them—beseeched her—his hand sought hers.

She meanwhile sat in a trance of agitation, mistress neither of reason nor of feeling. She felt his spell, as she had always done. The woman in her thrilled at last to the mere name and neighbourhood of love. The heart in her cried out that pain and loss could only be deadened so—the past could only be silenced by filling the present with movement and warm life.

Yet what tremors of conscience—what radical distrust of herself and him! And the first articulate words she found to say to him were very much what she had said to Aldous so long ago—only filled with a bitterer and more realised content.

"After all, what do we know of each other! You don't know me—not as I am. And I feel—"

"Doubts?" he said, smiling. "Do you imagine that that seems anything but natural to me? I can have none; but you—After all, we are not quite boy and girl, you and I; we have lived, both of us! But ask yourself—has not destiny brought us together? Think of it all!"

Their eyes met again. Hers sank under the penetration, the flame of his. Yet, throughout, he was conscious of the doorway to his right, of the figures incessantly moving across it. His own eloquence had convinced and moved himself abundantly. Yet, as he saw her yielding, he was filled with the strangest mixture of passion—and a sort of disillusion—almost contempt! If she had turned from him with the dignity worthy of that head and brow, it flashed across him that he could have tasted more of the abandonment of love—have explored his own emotion more perfectly.

Still, the situation was poignant enough—in one sense complete. Was Raeburn still there—in that next room?

"My answer?" he said to her, pressing her hand as they sat in the shelter of the flowers. For he was aware of the practical facts—the hour, the place—if she was not.

She roused herself.

"I can't," she said, making a movement to rise, which his strong grasp, however, prevented. "I can't answer you to-night, Mr. Wharton. I should have much to think over—so much! It might all look quite different to me. You must give me time."

"To-morrow?" he said quietly.

"No!" she said impetuously, "not to-morrow; I go back to my work, and I must have quiet and time. In a fortnight—not before. I will write."

"Oh, impossible!" he said, with a little frown.

And still holding her, he drew her towards him. His gaze ran over the face, the warm whiteness under the lace of the dress, the beautiful arms. She shrank from it—feeling a sudden movement of dislike and fear; but before she could disengage herself he had pressed his lips on the arm nearest to him.

"I gave you no leave!" she said passionately, under her breath, as he let her go.

He met her flashing look with tender humbleness.

"Marcella!"

The word was just breathed into the air. She wavered—yet a chill had passed over her. She could not recover the moment of magic.

"Not to-morrow," she repeated steadily, though dreading lest she should burst into tears, "and not till I see clearly—till I can—" She caught her breath. "Now I am going back to Lady Winterbourne."



CHAPTER XIV.

For some hours after he reached his own room, Wharton sat in front of his open window, sunk in the swift rushing of thought, as a bramble sways in a river. The July night first paled, then flushed into morning; the sun rose above the empty street and the light mists enwrapping the great city, before he threw himself on his bed, exhausted enough at last to fall into a restless sleep.

The speculation of those quick-pulsed hours was in the end about equally divided between Marcella and the phrases and turns of his interview with Mr. Pearson. It was the sudden leap of troubled excitement stirred in him by that interview—heightened by the sight of Raeburn—that had driven him past recall by the most natural of transitions, into his declaration to Marcella.

But he had no sooner reached his room than, at first with iron will, he put the thought of Marcella, of the scene which had just passed, away from him. His pulses were still quivering. No matter! It was the brain he had need of. He set it coolly and keenly to work.

Mr. Pearson? Well!—Mr. Pearson had offered him a bribe; there could be no question as to that. His clear sense never blinked the matter for an instant. Nor had he any illusions as to his own behaviour. Even now he had no further right to the sleep of the honest man.

Let him realise, however, what had happened. He had gone to Lady Masterton's party, in the temper of a man who knows that ruin is upon him, and determined, like the French criminal, to exact his cigar and eau de vie before the knife falls. Never had things looked so desperate; never had all resource seemed to him so completely exhausted. Bankruptcy must come in the course of a few weeks; his entailed property would pass into the hands of a receiver; and whatever recovery might be ultimately possible, by the end of August he would be, for the moment, socially and politically undone.

There could be no question of his proposing seriously to Marcella Boyce. Nevertheless, he had gone to Lady Masterton's on purpose to meet her; and his manner on seeing her had asserted precisely the same intimate claim upon her, which, during the past six weeks, had alternately attracted and repelled her.

Then Mr. Pearson had interrupted.

Wharton, shutting his eyes, could see the great man lean against the window-frame close to the spot where, a quarter of an hour later, Marcella had sat among the flowers—the dapper figure, the long, fair moustaches, the hand playing with the eye-glass.

"I have been asked—er—er—" What a conceited manner the fellow had!—"to get some conversation with you, Mr. Wharton, on the subject of the Damesley strike. You give me leave?"

Whereupon, in less than ten minutes, the speaker had executed an important commission, and, in offering Wharton a bribe of the most bare-faced kind, had also found time for supplying him with a number of the most delicate and sufficient excuses for taking it.

The masters, in fact, sent an embassy. They fully admitted the power of the Clarion and its owner. No doubt, it would not be possible for the paper to keep up its strike fund indefinitely; there were perhaps already signs of slackening. Still it had been maintained for a considerable time; and so long as it was reckoned on, in spite of the wide-spread misery and suffering now prevailing, the men would probably hold out.

In these circumstances, the principal employers concerned had thought it best to approach so formidable an opponent and to put before him information which might possibly modify his action. They had authorised Mr. Pearson to give him a full account of what was proposed in the way of re-organisation of the trade, including the probable advantages which the work-people themselves would be likely to reap from it in the future.

Mr. Pearson ran in a few sentences through the points of the scheme. Wharton stood about a yard away from him, his hands in his pockets, a little pale and frowning—looking intently at the speaker.

Then Mr. Pearson paused and cleared his throat.

Well!—that was the scheme. His principals believed that, when both it and the employers' determination to transfer their business to the Continent rather than be beaten by the men were made fully known to the owner of the Clarion, it must affect his point of view. Mr. Pearson was empowered to give him any details he might desire. Meanwhile—so confident were they in the reasonableness of the case that they even suggested that the owner of the Clarion himself should take part in the new Syndicate. On condition of his future co-operation—it being understood that the masters took their stand irrevocably on the award—the men at present responsible for the formation of the Syndicate proposed to allot Mr. Wharton ten Founder's Shares in the new undertaking.

Wharton, sitting alone, recalling these things, was conscious again of that start in every limb, that sudden rush of blood to the face, as though a lash had struck him.

For in a few seconds his mind took in the situation. Only the day before, a city acquaintance had said to him, "If you and your confounded paper were out of the way, and this thing could be placed properly on the market, there would be a boom in it at once. I am told that in twenty-four hours the Founder's Shares would be worth 2,000 l. apiece!"

There was a pause of silence. Then Wharton threw a queer dark look at the solicitor, and was conscious that his pulse was thumping.

"There can be no question I think, Mr. Pearson—between you and me—as to the nature of such a proposal as that!"

"My dear sir," Mr. Pearson had interrupted hastily, "let me, above all, ask you to take time—time enough, at any rate, to turn the matter well over in your mind. The interests of a great many people, besides yourself, are concerned. Don't give me an answer to-night; it is the last thing I desire. I have thrown out my suggestion. Consider it. To-morrow is Sunday. If you are disposed to carry it further, come and see me Monday morning—that's all. I will be at your service at any hour, and I can then give you a much more complete outline of the intentions of the Company. Now I really must go and look for Mrs. Pearson's carriage."

Wharton followed the great man half mechanically across the little room, his mind in a whirl of mingled rage and desire. Then suddenly he stopped his companion:

"Has George Denny anything to do with this proposal, Mr. Pearson?"

Mr. Pearson paused, with a little air of vague cogitation.

"George Denny? Mr. George Denny, the member for Westropp? I have had no dealings whatever with that gentleman in the matter."

Wharton let him pass.

Then as he himself entered the tea-room, he perceived the bending form of Aldous Raeburn chatting to Lady Winterbourne on his right, and that tall whiteness close in front, waiting for him.

His brain cleared in a flash. He was perfectly conscious that a bribe had just been offered him, of the most daring and cynical kind, and that he had received the offer in the tamest way. An insult had been put upon him which had for ever revealed the estimate held of him by certain shrewd people, for ever degraded him in his own eyes.

Nevertheless, he was also conscious that the thing was done. The bribe would be accepted, the risk taken. So far as his money-matters were concerned he was once more a free man. The mind had adjusted itself, reached its decision in a few minutes.

And the first effect of the mingled excitement and self-contempt which the decision brought with it had been to drive him into the scene with Marcella. Instinctively he asked of passion to deliver him quickly from the smart of a new and very disagreeable experience.

* * * * *

Well! why should he not take these men's offer?

He was as much convinced as they that this whole matter of the strike had of late come to a deadlock. So long as the public would give, the workers, passionately certain of the justice of their own cause, and filled with new ambitions after more decent living, would hold out. On the other hand, he perfectly understood that the masters had also in many ways a strong case, that they had been very hard hit by the strike, and that many of them would rather close their works or transfer them bodily to the Continent than give way. Some of the facts Pearson had found time to mention had been certainly new and striking.

At the same time he never disguised from himself for an instant that but for a prospective 20,000 l. the facts concerned would not have affected him in the least. Till to-night it had been to his interest to back the strike, and to harass the employers. Now things were changed; and he took a curious satisfaction in the quick movements of his own intelligence, as his thought rapidly sketched the "curve" the Clarion would have to take, and the arguments by which he would commend it.

As to his shares, they would be convertible of course into immediate cash. Some man of straw would be forthcoming to buy what he would possess in the name of another man of straw. It was not supposed—he took for granted—by the men who had dared to tempt him, that he would risk his whole political reputation and career for anything less than a bird in the hand.

Well! what were the chances of secrecy?

Naturally they stood to lose less by disclosure, a good deal, than he did. And Denny, one of the principal employers, was his personal enemy. He would be likely enough for the present to keep his name out of the affair. But no man of the world could suppose that the transaction would pass without his knowledge. Wharton's own hasty question to Mr. Pearson on the subject seemed to himself now, in cold blood, a remarkably foolish one.

He walked up and down thinking this point out. It was the bitter pill of the whole affair.

In the end, with a sudden recklessness of youth and resource, he resolved to dare it. There would not be much risk. Men of business do not as a rule blazon their own dirty work, and public opinion would be important to the new Syndicate.

Some risk, of course, there would be. Well! his risks, as they stood, were pretty considerable. He chose the lesser—not without something of a struggle, some keen personal smart. He had done a good many mean and questionable things in his time, but never anything as gross as this. The thought of what his relation to a certain group of men—to Denny especially—would be in the future, stung sharply. But it is the part of the man of action to put both scruple and fear behind him on occasion. His career was in question.

Craven? Well, Craven would be a difficulty. He would telegraph to him first thing in the morning before the offices closed, and see him on Monday. For Marcella's sake the man must be managed—somehow.

And—Marcella! How should she ever know, ever suspect! She already disliked the violence with which the paper had supported the strike. He would find no difficulty whatever in justifying all that she or the public would see, to her.

Then insensibly he let his thoughts glide into thinking of the money. Presently he drew a sheet of paper towards him and covered it with calculations as to his liabilities. By George! how well it worked out! By the time he threw it aside, and walked to the window for air, he already felt himself a bona-fide supporter of the Syndicate—the promoter in the public interest of a just and well-considered scheme.

Finally, with a little joyous energetic movement which betrayed the inner man, he flung down his cigarette, and turned to write an ardent letter to Marcella, while the morning sun stole into the dusty room.

Difficult? of course! Both now and in the future. It would take him half his time yet—and he could ill afford it—to bring her bound and captive. He recognised in her the southern element, so strangely mated with the moral English temper. Yet he smiled over it. The subtleties of the struggle he foresaw enchanted him.

And she would be mastered! In this heightened state of nerve his man's resolution only rose the more fiercely to the challenge of her resistance.

Nor should she cheat him with long delays. His income would be his own again, and life decently easy. He already felt himself the vain showman of her beauty.

A thought of Lady Selina crossed his mind, producing amusement and compassion—indulgent amusement, such as the young man is apt to feel towards the spinster of thirty-five who pays him attention. A certain sense of re-habilitation, too, which at the moment was particularly welcome. For, no doubt, he might have married her and her fortune had he so chosen. As it was, why didn't she find some needy boy to take pity on her? There were plenty going, and she must have abundance of money. Old Alresford, too, was fast doddering off the stage, and then where would she be—without Alresford House, or Busbridge, or those various other pedestals which had hitherto held her aloft?

* * * * *

Early on Sunday morning Wharton telegraphed to Craven, directing him to "come up at once for consultation." The rest of the day the owner of the Clarion spent pleasantly on the river with Mrs. Lane and a party of ladies, including a young Duchess, who was pretty, literary, and socialistic. At night he went down to the Clarion office, and produced a leader on the position of affairs at Damesley which, to the practised eye, contained one paragraph—but one only—wherein the dawn of a new policy might have been discerned.

Naturally the juxtaposition of events at the moment gave him considerable anxiety. He knew very well that the Damesley bargain could not be kept waiting. The masters were losing heavily every day, and were not likely to let him postpone the execution of his part of the contract for a fortnight or so to suit his own convenience. It was like the sale of an "old master." His influence must be sold now—at the ripe moment—or not at all.

At the same time it was very awkward. In one short fortnight the meeting of the party would be upon him. Surrender on the Damesley question would give great offence to many of the Labour members. It would have to be very carefully managed—very carefully thought out.