When she had finished it and had sat thinking awhile over the declining fire, an idea struck her. She took a piece of paper from Miss Raeburn's desk, and wrote on it:

"Will you read this—and Lord Maxwell—before I come down? I forgot that you had not seen it.—M."

A ring at the bell brought the maid.

"Will you please get this taken to Mr. Raeburn? And then, don't disturb me again for half an hour."

And for that time she lay in Miss Raeburn's favourite chair, outwardly at rest. Inwardly she was ranging all her arguments, marshalling all her forces.

When the chiming clock in the great hall below struck nine, she got up and put the lamp for a moment on the mantelpiece, which held a mirror. She had already bathed her face and smoothed her hair. But she looked at herself again with attention, drew down the thick front waves of hair a little lower on the white brow, as she liked to have them, and once more straightened the collar and cuffs which were the only relief to her plain black dress.

The house as she stepped out into it seemed very still. Perfumed breaths of flowers and pot-pourri ascended from the hall. The pictures along the walls as she passed were those same Caroline and early Georgian beauties that had so flashingly suggested her own future rule in this domain on the day when Aldous proposed to her.

She felt suddenly very shrinking and lonely as she went downstairs. The ticking of a large clock somewhere—the short, screaming note of Miss Raeburn's parrot in one of the ground-floor rooms—these sounds and the beating of her own heart seemed to have the vast house to themselves.

No!—that was a door opening—Aldous coming to fetch her. She drew a childish breath of comfort.

He sprang up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, as he saw her coming.

"Are you rested—were they good to you? Oh! my precious one!—how pale you are still! Will you come and see my—grandfather now? He is quite ready."

She let him lead her in. Lord Maxwell was standing by his writing-table, leaning over the petition which was open before him—one hand upon it. At sight of her he lifted his white head. His fine aquiline face was grave and disturbed. But nothing could have been kinder or more courtly than his manner as he came towards her.

"Sit down in that chair. Aldous, make her comfortable. Poor child, how tired she looks! I hear you wished to speak to me on this most unhappy, most miserable business."

Marcella, who was sitting erect on the edge of the chair into which Aldous had put her, lifted her eyes with a sudden confidence. She had always liked Lord Maxwell.

"Yes," she said, struggling to keep down eagerness and emotion. "Yes, I came to bring you this petition, which is to be sent up to the Home Secretary on behalf of Jim Hurd, and—and—to beg of you and Aldous to sign it, if in any way you can. I know it will be difficult, but I thought I might—I might be able to suggest something to you—to convince you—as I have known these people so well—and it is very important to have your signatures."

How crude it sounded—how mechanical! She felt that she had not yet command of herself. The strange place, the stately room, the consciousness of Aldous behind her—Aldous, who should have been on her side and was not—all combined to intimidate her.

Lord Maxwell's concern was evident. In the first place, he was painfully, unexpectedly struck by the change in the speaker. Why, what had Aldous been about? So thin! so frail and willowy in her black dress—monstrous!

"My dear," he said, walking up to her and laying a fatherly hand on her shoulder, "my dear, I wish I could make you understand how gladly I would do this, or anything else, for you, if I honourably could. I would do it for your sake and for your grandfather's sake. But—this is a matter of conscience, of public duty, both for Aldous and myself. You will not surely wish even, that we should be governed in our relations to it by any private feeling or motive?"

"No, but I have had no opportunity of speaking to you about it—and I take such a different view from Aldous. He knows—everybody must know—that there is another side, another possible view from that which the judge took. You weren't in court to-day, were you, at all?"

"No. But I read all the evidence before the magistrates with great care, and I have just talked over the crucial points with Aldous, who followed everything to-day, as you know, and seems to have taken special note of Mr. Wharton's speeches."

"Aldous!"—her voice broke irrepressibly into another note—"I thought he would have let me speak to you first!—to-night!"

Lord Maxwell, looking quickly at his grandson, was very sorry for him. Aldous bent over her chair.

"You remember," he said, "you sent down the petition. I thought that meant that we were to read and discuss it. I am very sorry."

She tried to command herself, pressing her hand to her brow. But already she felt the irrevocable, and anger and despair were rising.

"The whole point lies in this," she said, looking up: "Can we believe Hurd's own story? There is no evidence to corroborate it. I grant that—the judge did not believe it—and there is the evidence of hatred. But is it not possible and conceivable all the same? He says that he did not go out with any thought whatever of killing Westall, but that when Westall came upon him with his stick up, threatening and abusing him, as he had done often before, in a fit of wild rage he shot at him. Surely, surely that is conceivable? There is—there must be a doubt; or, if it is murder, murder done in that way is quite, quite different from other kinds and degrees of murder."

Now she possessed herself. The gift of flowing persuasive speech which was naturally hers, which the agitations, the debates of these weeks had been maturing, came to her call. She leant forward and took up the petition. One by one she went through its pleas, adding to them here and there from her own knowledge of Hurd and his peasant's life—presenting it all clearly, with great intellectual force, but in an atmosphere of emotion, of high pity, charged throughout with the "tears of things." To her, gradually, unconsciously, the whole matter—so sordid, commonplace, brutal in Lord Maxwell's eyes!—had become a tragic poem, a thing of fear and pity, to which her whole being vibrated. And as she conceived it, so she reproduced it. Wharton's points were there indeed, but so were Hurd's poverty, Hurd's deformity, Hurd as the boyish victim of a tyrant's insults, the miserable wife, the branded children—emphasised, all of them, by the occasional quiver, quickly steadied again, of the girl's voice.

Lord Maxwell sat by his writing-table, his head resting on his hand, one knee crossed over the other. Aldous still hung over her chair. Neither interrupted her. Once the eyes of the two men met over her head—a distressed, significant look. Aldous heard all she said, but what absorbed him mainly was the wild desire to kiss the dark hair, so close below him, alternating with the miserable certainty that for him at that moment to touch, to soothe her, was to be repulsed.

When her voice broke—when she had said all she could think of—she remained looking imploringly at Lord Maxwell.

He was silent a little; then he stooped forward and took her hand.

"You have spoken," he said with great feeling, "most nobly—most well—like a good woman, with a true compassionate heart. But all these things you have said are not new to me, my dear child. Aldous warned me of this petition—he has pressed upon me, still more I am sure upon himself, all that he conceived to be your view of the case—the view of those who are now moving in the matter. But with the best will in the world I cannot, and I believe that he cannot—though he must speak for himself—I cannot take that view. In my belief Hurd's act was murder, and deserves the penalty of murder. I have paid some attention to these things. I was a practising barrister in my youth, and later I was for two years Home Secretary. I will explain to you my grounds very shortly."

And, bending forward, he gave the reasons for his judgment of the case as carefully and as lucidly as though he were stating them to a fellow-expert, and not to an agitated girl of twenty-one. Both in words and manner there was an implied tribute, not only to Marcella, but perhaps to that altered position of the woman in our moving world which affects so many things and persons in unexpected ways.

Marcella listened, restlessly. She had drawn her hand away, and was twisting her handkerchief between her fingers. The flush that had sprung up while she was talking had died away. She grew whiter and whiter. When Lord Maxwell ceased, she said quickly, and as he thought unreasonably—

"So you will not sign?"

"No," he replied firmly, "I cannot sign. Holding the conviction about the matter I do, I should be giving my name to statements I do not believe; and in order to give myself the pleasure of pleasing you, and of indulging the pity that every man must feel for every murderer's wife and children, I should be not only committing a public wrong, but I should be doing what I could to lessen the safety and security of one whole class of my servants—men who give me honourable service—and two of whom have been so cruelly, so wantonly hurried before their Maker!"

His voice gave the first sign of his own deep and painful feeling on the matter. Marcella shivered.

"Then," she said slowly, "Hurd will be executed."

Lord Maxwell had a movement of impatience.

"Let me tell you," he said, "that that does not follow at all. There is some importance in signatures—or rather in the local movement that the signatures imply. It enables a case to be reopened, which, in any event, this case is sure to be. But any Home Secretary who could decide a murder case on any other grounds whatever than those of law and his own conscience would not deserve his place a day—an hour! Believe me, you mistake the whole situation."

He spoke slowly, with the sharp emphasis natural to his age and authority. Marcella did not believe him. Every nerve was beginning to throb anew with that passionate recoil against tyranny and prejudice, which was in itself an agony.

"And you say the same?" she said, turning to Aldous.

"I cannot sign that petition," he said sadly. "Won't you try and believe what it costs me to refuse?"

It was a heavy blow to her. Amply as she had been prepared for it, there had always been at the bottom of her mind a persuasion that in the end she would get her way. She had been used to feel barriers go down before that ultimate power of personality of which she was abundantly conscious. Yet it had not availed her here—not even with the man who loved her.

Lord Maxwell looked at the two—the man's face of suffering, the girl's struggling breath.

"There, there, Aldous!" he said, rising. "I will leave you a minute. Do make Marcella rest—get her, for all our sakes, to forget this a little. Bring her in presently to us for some coffee. Above all, persuade her that we love her and admire her with all our hearts, but that in a matter of this kind she must leave us to do—as before God!—what we think right."

He stood before her an instant, gazing down upon her with dignity—nay, a certain severity. Then he turned away and left the room.

Marcella sprang up.

"Will you order the carriage?" she said in a strangled voice. "I will go upstairs."

"Marcella!" cried Aldous; "can you not be just to me, if it is impossible for you to be generous?"

"Just!" she repeated, with a tone and gesture of repulsion, pushing him back from her. "You can talk of justice!"

He tried to speak, stammered, and failed. That strange paralysis of the will-forces which dogs the man of reflection at the moment when he must either take his world by storm or lose it was upon him now. He had never loved her more passionately—but as he stood there looking at her, something broke within him, the first prescience of the inevitable dawned.

"You," she said again, walking stormily to and fro, and catching at her breath—"You, in this house, with this life—to talk of justice—the justice that comes of slaying a man like Hurd! And I must go back to that cottage, to that woman, and tell her there is no hope—none! Because you must follow your conscience—you who have everything! Oh! I would not have your conscience—I wish you a heart—rather! Don't come to me, please! Oh! I must think how it can be. Things cannot go on so. I should kill myself, and make you miserable. But now I must go to her—to the poor—to those whom I love, whom I carry in my heart!"

She broke off sobbing. He saw her, in her wild excitement, look round the splendid room as though she would wither it to ruin with one fiery, accusing glance.

"You are very scornful of wealth," he said, catching her wrists, "but one thing you have no right to scorn!—the man who has given you his inmost heart—and now only asks you to believe in this, that he is not the cruel hypocrite you are determined to make him!"

His face quivered in every feature. She was checked a moment—checked by the moral compulsion of his tone and manner, as well as by his words. But again she tore herself away.

"Please go and order the carriage," she said. "I cannot bear any more. I must go home and rest. Some day I will ask your pardon—oh! for this—and—and—" she was almost choked again—"other things. But now I must go away. There is some one who will help me. I must not forget that!"

The reckless words, the inflection, turned Aldous to stone. Unconsciously he drew himself proudly erect—their eyes met. Then he went up to the bell and rang it.

"The brougham at once, for Miss Boyce. Will you have a maid to go with you?" he asked, motioning the servant to stay till Miss Boyce had given her answer.

"No, thank you. I must go and put on my things. Will you explain to Miss Raeburn?"

The footman opened the door for her. She went.



CHAPTER XIV.

"But this is unbearable!" said Aldous. "Do you mean to say that she is at home and that she will not see me?"

Mrs. Boyce's self-possession was shaken for once by the flushed humiliation of the man before her.

"I am afraid it is so," she said hurriedly. "I remonstrated with Marcella, but I could do nothing. I think, if you are wise, you will not for the present attempt to see her."

Aldous sat down, with his hat in his hand, staring at the floor. After a few moments' silence he looked up again.

"And she gave you no message for me?"

"No," said Mrs. Boyce, reluctantly. "Only that she could not bear to see anybody from the Court, even you, while this matter was still undecided."

Aldous's eye travelled round the Mellor drawing-room. It was arrested by a chair beside him. On it lay an envelope addressed to Miss Boyce, of which the handwriting seemed to him familiar. A needle with some black silk hanging from it had been thrust into the stuffed arm of the chair; the cushion at the back still bore the imprint of the sitter. She had been there, not three minutes ago, and had fled before him. The door into Mrs. Boyce's sitting-room was still ajar.

He looked again at the envelope on the chair, and recognised the writing. Walking across to where Mrs. Boyce sat, he took a seat beside her.

"Will you tell me," he said steadily—"I think you will admit I have a right to know—is Marcella in constant correspondence now with Henry Wharton?"

Mrs. Boyce's start was not perceptible.

"I believe so," she quickly replied. "So far as I can judge, he writes to her almost every other day."

"Does she show you his letters?"

"Very often. They are entirely concerned with his daily interviews and efforts on Hurd's behalf."

"Would you not say," he asked, after another pause, raising his clear grey eyes to her, "that since his arrival here in December Marcella's whole views and thoughts have been largely—perhaps vitally—influenced by this man?"

Mrs. Boyce had long expected questions of this kind—had, indeed, often marvelled and cavilled that Aldous had not asked them weeks before. Now that they were put to her she was, first of all, anxious to treat them with common sense, and as much plain truth as might be fair to both parties. The perpetual emotion in which Marcella lived tired and oppressed the mother. For herself she asked to see things in a dry light. Yet she knew well that the moment was critical. Her feeling was more mixed than it had been. On the whole it was indignantly on Aldous's side—with qualifications and impatiences, however.

She took up her embroidery again before she answered him. In her opinion the needle is to the woman what the cigarette is to the diplomatist.

"Yes, certainly," she said at last. "He has done a great deal to form her opinions. He has made her both read and think on all those subjects she has so long been fond of talking about."

She saw Aldous wince; but she had her reasons for being plain with him.

"Has there been nothing else than that in it?" said Aldous, in an odd voice.

Mrs. Boyce tried no evasions. She looked at him straight, her slight, energetic head, with its pale gold hair lit up by the March sun behind her.

"I do not know," she said calmly; "that is the real truth. I think there is nothing else. But let me tell you what more I think."

Aldous laid his hand on hers for an instant. In his pity and liking for her he had once or twice allowed himself this quasi-filial freedom.

"If you would," he entreated.

"Leave Marcella quite alone—for the present. She is not herself—not normal, in any way. Nor will she be till this dreadful thing is over. But when it is over, and she has had time to recover a little, then"—her thin voice expressed all the emphasis it could—"then assert yourself! Ask her that question you have asked me—and get your answer."

He understood. Her advice to him, and the tone of it, implied that she had not always thought highly of his powers of self-defence in the past. But there was a proud and sensitive instinct in him which both told him that he could not have done differently and forbade him to explain.

"You have come from London to-day?" said Mrs. Boyce, changing the subject. All intimate and personal conversation was distasteful to her, and she admitted few responsibilities. Her daughter hardly counted among them.

"Yes; London is hard at work cabinet-making," he said, trying to smile. "I must get back to-night."

"I don't know how you could be spared," said Mrs. Boyce.

He paused; then he broke out: "When a man is in the doubt and trouble I am, he must be spared. Indeed, since the night of the trial, I feel as though I had been of very little use to any human being."

He spoke simply, but every word touched her. What an inconceivable entanglement the whole thing was! Yet she was no longer merely contemptuous of it.

"Look!" she said, lifting a bit of black stuff from the ground beside the chair which held the envelope; "she is already making the mourning for the children. I can see she despairs."

He made a sound of horror.

"Can you do nothing?" he cried reproachfully. "To think of her dwelling upon this—nothing but this, day and night—and I, banished and powerless!"

He buried his head in his hands.

"No, I can do nothing," said Mrs. Boyce, deliberately. Then, after a pause, "You do not imagine there is any chance of success for her?"

He looked up and shook his head.

"The Radical papers are full of it, as you know. Wharton is managing it with great ability, and has got some good supporters in the House. But I happened to see the judge the day before yesterday, and I certainly gathered from him that the Home Office was likely to stand firm. There may be some delay. The new ministry will not kiss hands till Saturday. But no doubt it will be the first business of the new Home Secretary.—By the way, I had rather Marcella did not hear of my seeing Judge Cartwright," he added hastily—almost imploringly. "I could not bear that she should suppose—"

Mrs. Boyce thought to herself indignantly that she never could have imagined such a man in such a plight.

"I must go," he said, rising. "Will you tell her from me," he added slowly, "that I could never have believed she would be so unkind as to let me come down from London to see her, and send me away empty—without a word?"

"Leave it to my discretion," said Mrs. Boyce, smiling and looking up. "Oh, by the way, she told me to thank you. Mr. Wharton, in his letter this morning, mentioned that you had given him two introductions which were important to him. She specially wished you to be thanked for it."

His exclamation had a note of impatient contempt that Mrs. Boyce was genuinely glad to hear. In her opinion he was much too apt to forget that the world yields itself only to the "violent."

He walked away from the house without once looking back. Marcella, from, her window, watched him go.

"How could she see him?" she asked herself passionately, both then and on many other occasions during these rushing, ghastly days. His turn would come, and it should be amply given him. But now the very thought of that half-hour in Lord Maxwell's library threw her into wild tears. The time for entreaty—for argument—was gone by, so far as he was concerned. He might have been her champion, and would not. She threw herself recklessly, madly into the encouragement and support of the man who had taken up the task which, in her eyes, should have been her lover's. It had become to her a fight—with society, with the law, with Aldous—in which her whole nature was absorbed. In the course of the fight she had realised Aldous's strength, and it was a bitter offence to her.

How little she could do after all! She gathered together all the newspapers that were debating the case, and feverishly read every line; she wrote to Wharton, commenting on what she read, and on his letters; she attended the meetings of the Reprieve Committee which had been started at Widrington; and she passed hours of every day with Minta Hurd and her children. She would hardly speak to Mary Harden and the rector, because they had not signed the petition, and at home her relations with her father were much strained. Mr. Boyce was awakening to a good deal of alarm as to how things might end. He might not like the Raeburns, but that anything should come in the way of his daughter's match was, notwithstanding, the very last thing in the world, as he soon discovered, that he really desired. During six months he had taken it for granted; so had the county. He, of all men, could not afford to be made ridiculous, apart from the solid, the extraordinary advantages of the matter. He thought Marcella a foolish, unreasonable girl, and was not the less in a panic because his wife let him understand that he had had a good deal to do with it. So that between him and his daughter there were now constant sparrings—sparrings which degraded Marcella in her own eyes, and contributed not a little to make her keep away from home.

The one place where she breathed freely, where the soul had full course, was in Minta Hurd's kitchen. Side by side with that piteous plaintive misery, her own fierceness dwindled. She would sit with little Willie on her knees in the dusk of the spring evenings, looking into the fire, and crying silently. She never suspected that her presence was often a burden and constraint, not only to the sulky sister-in-law but to the wife herself. While Miss Boyce was there the village kept away; and Mrs. Hurd was sometimes athirst, without knowing it, for homelier speech and simpler consolations than any Marcella could give her.

The last week arrived. Wharton's letters grew more uncertain and despondent; the Radical press fought on with added heat as the cause became more desperate. On Monday the wife went to see the condemned man, who told her not to be so silly as to imagine there was any hope. Tuesday night, Wharton asked his last question in Parliament. Friday was the day fixed for the execution.

The question in Parliament came on late. The Home Secretary's answer, though not final in form, was final in substance. Wharton went out immediately and wrote to Marcella. "She will not sleep if I telegraph to-night," he thought, with that instinct for detail, especially for physical detail, which had in it something of the woman. But, knowing that his letter could not reach her by the early post with the stroke of eight next morning, he sent out his telegram, that she might not learn the news first from the papers.

Marcella had wandered out before breakfast, feeling the house an oppression, and knowing that, one way or another, the last news might reach her any hour.

She had just passed through the little wood behind and alongside of the house, and was in a field beyond, when she heard some one running behind her. William handed her the telegram, his own red face full of understanding. Marcella took it, commanded herself till the boy was out of sight and hearing again, then sank down on the grass to read it.

"All over. The Home Secretary's official refusal to interfere with sentence sent to Widrington to-day. Accept my sorrow and sympathy."

She crushed it in her hand, raising her head mechanically. Before her lay that same shallow cup of ploughed land stretching from her father's big wood to the downs, on the edge of which Hurd had plied his ferrets in the winter nights. But to-day the spring worked in it, and breathed upon it. The young corn was already green in the furrows; the hazel-catkins quivered in the hedge above her; larks were in the air, daisies in the grass, and the march of sunny clouds could be seen in the flying shadows they flung on the pale greens and sheeny purples of the wide treeless basin.

Human helplessness, human agony—set against the careless joy of nature—there is no new way of feeling these things. But not to have felt them, and with the mad, impotent passion and outcry which filled Marcella's heart at this moment, is never to have risen to the full stature of our kind.

* * * * *

"Marcella, it is my strong wish—my command—that you do not go out to the village to-night."

"I must go, papa."

It was Thursday night—the night before the Friday morning fixed for Hurd's execution. Dinner at Mellor was just over. Mr. Boyce, who was standing in front of the fire, unconsciously making the most of his own inadequate height and size, looked angrily at his stately daughter. She had not appeared at dinner, and she was now dressed in the long black cloak and black hat she had worn so constantly in the last few weeks. Mr. Boyce detested the garb.

"You are making yourself ridiculous, Marcella. Pity for these wretched people is all very well, but you have no business to carry it to such a point that you—and we—become the talk, the laughing-stock of the county. And I should like to see you, too, pay some attention to Aldous Raeburn's feelings and wishes."

The admonition, in her father's mouth, would almost have made her laugh, if she could have laughed at anything. But, instead, she only repeated:

"I must go, I have explained to mamma."

"Evelyn! why do you permit it?" cried Mr. Boyce, turning aggressively to his wife.

"Marcella explained to me, as she truly said," replied Mrs. Boyce, looking up calmly. "It is not her habit to ask permission of any one."

"Mamma," exclaimed the girl, in her deep voice, "you would not wish to stop me?"

"No," said Mrs. Boyce, after a pause, "no. You have gone so far, I understand your wish to do this. Richard,"—she got up and went to him,—"don't excite yourself about it; shall I read to you, or play a game with you?"

He looked at her, trembling with anger. But her quiet eye warned him that he had had threatenings of pain that afternoon. His anger sank into fear. He became once more irritable and abject.

"Let her gang her gait," he said, throwing himself into a chair. "But I tell you I shall not put up with this kind of thing much longer, Marcella."

"I shall not ask you, papa," she said steadily, as she moved towards the door. Mrs. Boyce paused where she stood, and looked after her daughter, struck by her words. Mr. Boyce simply took them as referring to the marriage which would emancipate her before long from any control of his, and fumed, without finding a reply.

The maid-servant who, by Mrs. Boyce's orders, was to accompany Marcella to the village, was already at the front door. She carried a basket containing invalid food for little Willie, and a lighted lantern.

It was a dark night and raining fast. Marcella was fastening up her tweed skirt in the hall, when she saw Mrs. Boyce hurry along the gallery above, and immediately afterwards her mother came across the hall to her.

"You had better take the shawl, Marcella: it is cold and raw. If you are going to sit up most of the night you will want it."

She put a wrap of her own across Marcella's arm.

"Your father is quite right," she went on. "You have had one horrible experience to-day already—"

"Don't, mamma!" exclaimed Marcella, interrupting her. Then suddenly she threw her arms round her mother.

"Kiss me, mamma! please kiss me!"

Mrs. Boyce kissed her gravely, and let herself even linger a moment in the girl's strong hold.

"You are extraordinarily wilful," she said. "And it is so strange to me that you think you do any good. Are you sure even that she wants to have you?"

Marcella's lip quivered. She could not speak, apparently. Waving her hand to her mother, she joined the maid waiting for her, and the two disappeared into the blackness.

"But does it do any good?" Mrs. Boyce repeated to herself as she went back to the drawing-room. "Sympathy! who was ever yet fed, warmed, comforted by sympathy? Marcella robs that woman of the only thing that the human being should want at such a moment—solitude. Why should we force on the poor what to us would be an outrage?"

Meanwhile Marcella battled through the wind and rain, thankful that the warm spring burst was over, and that the skies no longer mocked this horror which was beneath them.

At the entrance to the village she stopped, and took the basket from the little maid.

"Now, Ruth, you can go home. Run quick, it is so dark, Ruth!"

"Yes, miss."

The young country girl trembled. Miss Boyce's tragic passion in this matter had to some extent infected the whole household in which she lived.

"Ruth, when you say your prayers to-night, pray God to comfort the poor,—and to punish the cruel!"

"Yes, miss," said the girl, timidly, and ready to cry. The lantern she held flashed its light on Miss Boyce's white face and tall form. Till her mistress turned away she did not dare to move; that dark eye, so wide, full, and living, roused in her a kind of terror.

On the steps of the cottage Marcella paused. She heard voices inside—or rather the rector's voice reading.

A thought of scorn rose in her heart. "How long will the poor endure this religion—this make-believe—which preaches patience, patience! when it ought to be urging war?"

But she went in softly, so as not to interrupt. The rector looked up and made a grave sign of the head as she entered; her own gesture forbade any other movement in the group; she took a stool beside Willie, whose makeshift bed of chairs and pillows stood on one side of the fire; and the reading went on.

Since Minta Hurd had returned with Marcella from Widrington Gaol that afternoon, she had been so ill that a doctor had been sent for. He had bade them make up her bed downstairs in the warm; and accordingly a mattress had been laid on the settle, and she was now stretched upon it. Her huddled form, the staring whiteness of the narrow face and closed eyelids, thrown out against the dark oak of the settle, and the disordered mass of grizzled hair, made the centre of the cottage.

Beside her on the floor sat Mary Harden, her head bowed over the rough hand she held, her eyes red with weeping. Fronting them, beside a little table, which held a small paraffin lamp, sat the young rector, his Testament in his hand, his slight boy's figure cast in sharp shadow on the cottage wall. He had placed himself so as to screen the crude light of the lamp from the wife's eyes; and an old skirt had been hung over a chair to keep it from little Willie. Between mother and child sat Ann Mullins, rocking herself to and fro over the fire, and groaning from time to time—a shapeless sullen creature, brutalised by many children and much poverty—of whom Marcella was often impatient.

"And he said, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom. And He said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise."

The rector's voice, in its awed monotony, dwelt insistently on each word, then paused. "To-day," whispered Mary, caressing Minta's hand, while the tears streamed down her cheeks; "he repented, Minta, and the Lord took him to Himself—at once—forgiving all his sins."

Mrs. Hurd gave no sign, but the dark figure on the other side of the cottage made an involuntary movement, which threw down a fire-iron, and sent a start through Willie's wasted body. The reader resumed; but perfect spontaneity was somehow lost both for him and for Mary. Marcella's stormy presence worked in them both, like a troubling leaven.

Nevertheless, the priest went steadily through his duty, dwelling on every pang of the Passion, putting together every sacred and sublime word. For centuries on centuries his brethren and forerunners had held up the Man of Sorrows before the anguished and the dying; his turn had come, his moment and place in the marvellous never-ending task; he accepted it with the meek ardour of an undoubting faith.

"And all the multitudes that came together to this sight, when they beheld the things that were done, returned, smiting their breasts."

He closed the book, and bent forward, so as to bring his voice close to the wife's ear.

"So He died—the Sinless and the Just—for you, for your husband. He has passed through death—through cruel death; and where He has gone, we poor, weak, stained sinners can follow,—holding to Him. No sin, however black, can divide us from Him, can tear us from His hand in the dark waters, if it be only repented,—thrown upon His Cross. Let us pray for your husband, let us implore the Lord's mercy this night—this hour!—upon his soul."

A shudder of remembrance passed through Marcella. The rector knelt; Mrs. Hurd lay motionless, save for deep gasps of struggling breath at intervals; Ann Mullins sobbed loudly; and Mary Harden wept as she prayed, lost in a mystical vision of the Lord Himself among them—there on the cottage floor—stretching hands of pity over the woman beside her, showing His marred side and brow.

Marcella alone sat erect, her whole being one passionate protest against a faith which could thus heap all the crimes and responsibilities of this too real earth on the shadowy head of one far-off Redeemer. "This very man who prays," she thought, "is in some sort an accomplice of those who, after tempting, are now destroying, and killing, because they know of nothing better to do with the life they themselves have made outcast."

And she hardened her heart.

When the spoken prayer was over, Mr. Harden still knelt on silently for some minutes. So did Mary. In the midst of the hush, Marcella saw the boy's eyes unclose. He looked with a sort of remote wonder at his mother and the figures beside her. Then suddenly the gaze became eager, concrete; he sought for something. Her eye followed his, and she perceived in the shadow beside him, on a broken chair placed behind the rough screen which had been made for him, the four tiny animals of pinched paper Wharton had once fashioned. She stooped noiselessly and moved the chair a little forward that he might see them better. The child with difficulty turned his wasted head, and lay with his skeleton hand under his cheek, staring at his treasures—his little, all—with just a gleam, a faint gleam, of that same exquisite content which had fascinated Wharton. Then, for the first time that day, Marcella could have wept.

At last the rector and his sister rose.

"God be with you, Mrs. Hurd," said Mr. Harden, stooping to her; "God support you!"

His voice trembled. Mrs. Hurd in bewilderment looked up.

"Oh, Mr. Harden!" she cried with a sudden wail. "Mr. Harden!"

Mary bent over her with tears, trying to still her, speaking again with quivering lips of "the dear Lord, the Saviour."

The rector turned to Marcella.

"You are staying the night with her?" he asked, under his breath.

"Yes. Mrs. Mullins was up all last night. I offered to come to-night."

"You went with her to the prison to-day, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Did you see Hurd?"

"For a very few minutes."

"Did you hear anything of his state of mind?" he asked anxiously. "Is he penitent?"

"He talked to me of Willie," she said—a fierce humanness in her unfriendly eyes. "I promised him that when the child died, he should be buried respectably—not by the parish. And I told him I would always look after the little girls."

The rector sighed. He moved away. Then unexpectedly he came back again.

"I must say it to you," he said firmly, but still so low as not to be heard by any one else in the cottage. "You are taking a great responsibility here to-night. Let me implore you not to fill that poor woman with thoughts of bitterness and revenge at such a moment of her life. That you feel bitterly, I know. Mary has explained to me—but ask yourself, I beg of you!—how is she to be helped through her misery, either now or in the future, except by patience and submission to the will of God?"

He had never made so long a speech to this formidable parishioner of his, and his young cheek glowed with the effort.

"You must leave me to do what I think best," said Marcella, coldly. She felt herself wholly set free from that sort of moral compulsion which his holiness of mind and character had once exerted upon her. That hateful opinion of his, which Mary had reported, had broken the spell once for all.

Mary did not venture to kiss her friend. They all went. Ann Mulling, who was dropping as much with sleep as grief, shuffled off last. When she was going, Mrs. Hurd seemed to rouse a little, and held her by the skirt, saying incoherent things.

"Dear Mrs. Hurd," said Marcella, kneeling down beside her, "won't you let Ann go? I am going to spend the night here, and take care of you and Willie."

Mrs. Hurd gave a painful start.

"You're very good, miss," she said half-consciously, "very good, I'm sure. But she's his own flesh and blood is Ann—his own flesh and blood. Ann!"

The two women clung together, the rough, ill-tempered sister-in-law muttering what soothing she could think of. When she was gone, Minta Hurd turned her face to the back of the settle and moaned, her hands clenched under her breast.

Marcella went about her preparations for the night. "She is extremely weak," Dr. Clarke had said; "the heart in such a state she may die of syncope on very small provocation. If she is to spend the night in crying and exciting herself, it will go hard with her. Get her to sleep if you possibly can."

And he had left a sleeping draught. Marcella resolved that she would persuade her to take it. "But I will wake her before eight o'clock," she thought. "No human being has the right to rob her of herself through that last hour."

And tenderly she coaxed Minta to take the doctor's "medicine." Minta swallowed it submissively, asking no questions. But the act of taking it roused her for the time, and she would talk. She even got up and tottered across to Willie.

"Willie!—Willie!—Oh! look, miss, he's got his animals—he don't think of nothing else. Oh, Willie! won't you think of your father?—you'll never have a father, Willie, not after to-night!"

The boy was startled by her appearance there beside him—his haggard, dishevelled mother, with the dews of perspiration standing on the face, and her black dress thrown open at the throat and breast for air. He looked at her, and a little frown lined the white brow. But he did not speak. Marcella thought he was too weak to speak, and for an instant it struck her with a thrill of girlish fear that he was dying then and there—that night—that hour. But when she had half helped, half forced Mrs. Hurd back to bed again, and had returned to him, his eyelids had fallen, he seemed asleep. The fast, whistling breath was much the same as it had been for days; she reassured herself.

And at last the wife slept too. The narcotic seized her. The aching limbs relaxed, and all was still. Marcella, stooping over her, kissed the shoulder of her dress for very joy, so grateful to every sense of the watcher was the sudden lull in the long activity of anguish.

Then she sat down in the rocking chair by the fire, yielding herself with a momentary relief to the night and the silence. The tall clock showed that it was not yet ten. She had brought a book with her, and she drew it upon her knee; but it lay unopened.

A fretting, gusty wind beat against the window, with occasional rushes of rain. Marcella shivered, though she had built up the fire, and put on her cloak.

A few distant sounds from the village street round the corner, the chiming of the church clock, the crackling of the fire close beside her—she heard everything there was to hear, with unusual sharpness of ear, and imagined more.

All at once restlessness, or some undefined impression, made her look round her. She saw that the scanty baize curtain was only half-drawn across one of the windows, and she got up to close it. Fresh from the light of the lamp, she stared through the panes into the night without at first seeing anything. Then there flashed out upon the dark the door of a public-house to the right, the last in the village road. A man came out stumbling and reeling; the light within streamed out an instant on the road and the common; then the pursuing rain and darkness fell upon him.

She was drawing back when, with sudden horror, she perceived something else close beside her, pressing against the window. A woman's face!—the powerful black and white of it—the strong aquiline features—the mad keenness of the look were all plain to her. The eyes looked in hungrily at the prostrate form on the settle—at the sleeping child. Another figure appeared out of the dark, running up the path. There was a slight scuffle, and voices outside. Marcella drew the curtain close with a hasty hand, and sat down hardly able to breathe. The woman who had looked in was Isabella Westall. It was said that she was becoming more and more difficult to manage and to watch.

Marcella was some time in recovering herself. That look, as of a sleepless, hateful eagerness, clung to the memory. Once or twice, as it haunted her, she got up again to make sure that the door was fast.

The incident, with all it suggested, did but intensify the horror and struggle in which the girl stood, made her mood more strained, more piercingly awake and alert. Gradually, as the hours passed, as all sounds from without, even that of the wind, died away, and the silence settled round her in ever-widening circles, like deep waters sinking to repose, Marcella felt herself a naked soul, alone on a wide sea, with shapes of pain and agony and revolt. She looked at the sleeping wife. "He, too, is probably asleep," she thought, remembering some information which a kindly warder had given her in a few jerky, well-meant sentences, while she was waiting downstairs in the gaol for Minta Hurd. "Incredible! only so many hours, minutes left—so far as any mortal knows—of living, thinking, recollecting, of all that makes us something as against the nothing of death—and a man wastes them in sleep, in that which is only meant for the ease and repair of the daily struggle. And Minta—her husband is her all—to-morrow she will have no husband; yet she sleeps, and I have helped to make her. Ah! Nature may well despise and trample on us; there is no reason in us—no dignity! Oh, why are we here—why am I here—to ache like this—to hate good people like Charles Harden and Mary—to refuse all I could give—to madden myself over pain I can never help? I cannot help it, yet I cannot forsake it; it drives, it clings to me!"

She sat over the fire, Willie's hand clasped in hers. He alone in this forlorn household loved her. Mrs. Hurd and the other children feared and depended on her. This creature of thistle-down—this little thread and patch of humanity—felt no fear of her. It was as though his weakness divined through her harshness and unripeness those maternal and protecting powers with which her nature was in truth so richly dowered. He confided himself to her with no misgivings. He was at ease when she was there.

Little piteous hand!—its touch was to her symbolic, imperative.

Eight months had she been at Mellor? And that Marcella, who had been living and moving amid these woods and lanes all this time—that foolish girl, delighting in new grandeurs, and flattered by Aldous Raeburn's attentions—that hot, ambitious person who had meant to rule a county through a husband—what had become of her? Up to the night of Hurd's death sentence she had still existed in some sort, with her obligations, qualms, remorses. But since then—every day, every hour had been grinding, scorching her away—fashioning in flame and fever this new Marcella who sat here, looking impatiently into another life, which should know nothing of the bonds of the old.

Ah, yes!—her thought could distinguish between the act and the man, between the man and his class; but in her feeling all was confounded. This awful growth of sympathy in her—strange irony!—had made all sympathy for Aldous Raeburn impossible to her. Marry him?—no! no!—never! But she would make it quite easy to him to give her up. Pride should come in—he should feel no pain in doing it. She had in her pocket the letter she had received from him that afternoon. She had hardly been able to read it. Ear and heart were alike dull to it.

From time to time she probably slept in her chair. Or else it was the perpetual rush of images and sensations through the mind that hastened the hours. Once when the first streaks of the March dawn were showing through the curtains Minta Hurd sprang up with a loud cry:

"Oh, my God! Jim, Jim! Oh, no!—take that off. Oh, please, sir, please! Oh, for God's sake, sir!"

Agony struggled with sleep. Marcella, shuddering, held and soothed her, and for a while sleep, or rather the drug in her veins, triumphed again. For another hour or two she lay restlessly tossing from side to side, but unconscious.

Willie hardly moved all night. Again and again Marcella held beef-tea or milk to his mouth, and tried to rouse him to take it, but she could make no impression on the passive lips; the sleeping serenity of the brow never changed.

At last, with a start, Marcella looked round and saw that the morning was fully there. A cold light was streaming through the curtains; the fire was still glowing; but her limbs were stiff and chilled under her shawl. She sprang up, horror descending on her. Her shaking fingers could hardly draw out the watch in her belt.

Ten minutes to eight!

For the first time the girl felt nerve and resolution fail her. She looked at Mrs. Hurd and wrung her hands. The mother was muttering and moving, but not yet fully awake; and Willie lay as before. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she drew the curtains back, as though inspiration might come with the light. The rain-clouds trailed across the common; water dripped heavily from the thatch of the cottage; and a few birds twittered from some bedraggled larches at the edge of the common. Far away, beyond and beneath those woods to the right, Widrington lay on the plain, with that high-walled stone building at its edge. She saw everything as it must now be happening as plainly as though she were bodily present there—the last meal—the pinioning—the chaplain.

Goaded by the passing seconds, she turned back at last to wake that poor sleeper behind her. But something diverted her. With a start she saw that Willie's eyes were open.

"Willie," she said, running to him, "how are you, dear? Shall I lift your head a little?"

He did not answer, though she thought he tried, and she was struck by the blueness under the eyes and nose. Hurriedly she felt his tiny feet. They were quite cold.

"Mrs. Hurd!" she cried, rousing her in haste; "dear Mrs. Hurd, come and see Willie!"

The mother sprang up bewildered, and, hurrying across the room, threw herself upon him.

"Willie, what is it ails you, dear? Tell mother! Is it your feet are so cold? But we'll rub them—we'll get you warm soon. And here's something to make you better." Marcella handed her some brandy. "Drink it, dear; drink it, sweetheart!" Her voice grew shrill.

"He can't," said Marcella. "Do not let us plague him; it is the end. Dr. Clarke said it would come in the morning."

They hung over him, forgetting everything but him for the moment—the only moment in his little life he came first even with his mother.

There was a slight movement of the hand.

"He wants his animals," said Marcella, the tears pouring down her cheeks. She lifted them and put them on his breast, laying the cold fingers over them.

Then he tried to speak.

"Daddy!" he whispered, looking up fully at his mother; "take 'em to Daddy!"

She fell on her knees beside him with a shriek, hiding her face, and shaking from head to foot. Marcella alone saw the slight, mysterious smile, the gradual sinking of the lids, the shudder of departing life that ran through the limbs.

A heavy sound swung through the air—a heavy repeated sound. Mrs. Hurd held up her head and listened. The church clock tolled eight. She knelt there, struck motionless by terror—by recollection.

"Oh, Jim!" she said, under her breath—"my Jim!"

The plaintive tone—as of a creature that has not even breath and strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it—broke Marcella's heart. Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband's death were words of prayer—the old shuddering cries wherewith the human soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompassing Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.



CHAPTER XV.

Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the door of Mellor. When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had heard his ring, was hurrying away.

"Don't go," he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness. "I want all the light on this I can get. Tell me, she has actually brought herself to regard this man's death as in some sort my doing—as something which ought to separate us?"

Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed in his hand. But she did not need the explanation. She had been expecting him at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.

"Marcella must explain for herself," she said, after a moment's thought. "I have no right whatever to speak for her. Besides, frankly, I do not understand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise that I have no part or lot in her—that I never had. It is just enough. She was brought up away from me. And I have no natural hold. I cannot help you, or any one else, with her."

Aldous had been very tolerant and compassionate in the past of this strange mother's abdication of her maternal place, and of its probable causes. But it was not in human nature that he should be either to-day. He resumed his questioning, not without sharpness.

"One word, please. Tell me something of what has happened since Thursday, before I see her. I have written—but till this morning I have had not one line from her."

They were standing by the window, he with his frowning gaze, in which agitation struggled against all his normal habits of manner and expression, fixed upon the lawn and the avenue. She told him briefly what she knew of Marcella's doings since the arrival of Wharton's telegram—of the night in the cottage, and the child's death. It was plain that he listened with a shuddering repulsion.

"Do you know," he exclaimed, turning upon her, "that she may never recover this? Such a strain, such a horror! rushed upon so wantonly, so needlessly."

"I understand. You think that I have been to blame? I do not wonder. But it is not true—not in this particular case. And anyway your view is not mine. Life—and the iron of it—has to be faced, even by women—perhaps, most of all, by women. But let me go now. Otherwise my husband will come in. And I imagine you would rather see Marcella before you see him or any one."

That suggestion told. He instantly gathered himself together, and nervously begged that she would send Marcella to him at once. He could think of nothing, talk of nothing, till he had seen her. She went, and Aldous was left to walk up and down the room planning what he should say. After the ghastly intermingling of public interests and private misery in which he had lived for these many weeks there was a certain relief in having reached the cleared space—the decisive moment—when he might at last give himself wholly to what truly concerned him. He would not lose her without a struggle. None the less he knew, and had known ever since the scene in the Court library, that the great disaster of his life was upon him.

The handle of the door turned. She was there.

He did not go to meet her. She had come in wrought up to face attack—reproaches, entreaties—ready to be angry or to be humble, as he should give her the lead. But he gave her no lead. She had to break through that quivering silence as best she could.

"I wanted to explain everything to you," she said in a low voice, as she came near to him. "I know my note last night was very hard and abrupt. I didn't mean to be hard. But I am still so tired—and everything that one says, and feels, hurts so."

She sank down upon a chair. This womanish appeal to his pity had not been at all in her programme. Nor did it immediately succeed. As he looked at her, he could only feel the wantonness of this eclipse into which she had plunged her youth and beauty. There was wrath, a passionate protesting wrath, under his pain.

"Marcella," he said, sitting down beside her, "did you read my letter that I wrote you the day before—?"

"Yes."

"And after that, you could still believe that I was indifferent to your grief—your suffering—or to the suffering of any human being for whom you cared? You could still think it, and feel it?"

"It was not what you have said all through," she replied, looking sombrely away from him, her chin on her hand, "it is what you have done."

"What have I done?" he said proudly, bending forward from his seat beside her. "What have I ever done but claim from you that freedom you desire so passionately for others—freedom of conscience—freedom of judgment? You denied me this freedom, though I asked it of you with all my soul. And you denied me more. Through these five weeks you have refused me the commonest right of love—the right to show you myself, to prove to you that through all this misery of differing opinion—misery, much more, oh, much more to me than to you!—I was in truth bent on the same ends with you, bearing the same burden, groping towards the same goal."

"No! no!" she cried, turning upon him, and catching at a word; "what burden have you ever borne? I know you were sorry—that there was a struggle in your mind—that you pitied me—pitied them. But you judged it all from above—you looked down—and I could not see that you had any right. It made me mad to have such things seen from a height, when I was below—in the midst—close to the horror and anguish of them."

"Whose fault was it," he interrupted, "that I was not with you? Did I not offer—entreat? I could not sign a statement of fact which seemed to me an untrue statement, but what prevented me—prevented us.—However, let me take that point first. Would you,"—he spoke deliberately, "would you have had me put my name to a public statement which I, rightly or wrongly, believed to be false, because you asked me? You owe it to me to answer."

She could not escape the penetrating fire of his eye. The man's mildness, his quiet self-renouncing reserve, were all burnt up at last in this white heat of an accusing passion. In return she began to forget her own resolve to bear herself gently.

"You don't remember," she cried, "that what divided us was your—your—incapacity to put the human pity first; to think of the surrounding circumstances—of the debt that you and I and everybody like us owe to a man like Hurd—to one who had been stunted and starved by life as he had been."

Her lip began to tremble.

"Then it comes to this," he said steadily, "that if I had been a poor man, you would have allowed me my conscience—my judgment of right and wrong—in such a matter. You would have let me remember that I was a citizen, and that pity is only one side of justice! You would have let me plead that Hurd's sin was not against me, but against the community, and that in determining whether to do what you wished or no, I must think of the community and its good before even I thought of pleasing you. If I had possessed no more than Hurd, all this would have been permitted me; but because of Maxwell Court—because of my money,"—she shrank before the accent of the word—"you refused me the commonest moral rights. My scruple, my feeling, were nothing to you. Your pride was engaged as well as your pity, and I must give way. Marcella! you talk of justice—you talk of equality—is the only man who can get neither at your hands—the man whom you promised to marry!"

His voice dwelt on that last word, dwelt and broke. He leant over her in his roused strength, and tried to take her hand. But she moved away from him with a cry.

"It is no use! Oh, don't—don't! It may be all true. I was vain, I dare say, and unjust, and hard. But don't you see—don't you understand—if we could take such different views of such a case—if it could divide us so deeply—what chance would there be if we were married? I ought never—never—to have said 'Yes' to you—even as I was then. But now," she turned to him slowly, "can't you see it for yourself? I am a changed creature. Certain things in me are gone—gone—and instead there is a fire—something driving, tormenting—which must burn its way out. When I think of what I liked so much when you asked me to marry you—being rich, and having beautiful things, and dresses, and jewels, and servants, and power—social power—above all that—I feel sick and choked. I couldn't breathe now in a house like Maxwell Court. The poor have come to mean to me the only people who really live, and really suffer. I must live with them, work for them, find out what I can do for them. You must give me up—you must indeed. Oh! and you will! You will be glad enough, thankful enough, when—when—you know what I am!"

He started at the words. Where was the prophetess? He saw that she was lying white and breathless, her face hidden against the arm of the chair.

In an instant he was on his knees beside her.

"Marcella!" he could hardly command his voice, but he held her struggling hand against his lips. "You think that suffering belongs to one class? Have you really no conception of what you will be dealing to me if you tear yourself away from me?"

She withdrew her hand, sobbing.

"Don't, don't stay near me!" she said; "there is—more—there is something else."

Aldous rose.

"You mean," he said in an altered voice, after a pause of silence, "that another influence—another man—has come between us?"

She sat up, and with a strong effort drove back her weeping.

"If I could say to you only this," she began at last, with long pauses, "'I mistook myself and my part in life. I did wrong, but forgive me, and let me go for both our sakes'—that would be—well!—that would be difficult,—but easier than this! Haven't you understood at all? When—when Mr. Wharton came, I began to see things very soon, not in my own way, but in his way. I had never met any one like him—not any one who showed me such possibilities in myself—such new ways of using one's life, and not only one's possessions—of looking at all the great questions. I thought it was just friendship, but it made me critical, impatient of everything else. I was never myself from the beginning. Then,—after the ball,"—he stooped over her that he might hear her the more plainly,—"when I came home I was in my room and I heard steps—there are ghost stories, you know, about that part of the house. I went out to see. Perhaps, in my heart of hearts—oh, I can't tell, I can't tell!—anyway, he was there. We went into the library, and we talked. He did not want to touch our marriage,—but he said all sorts of mad things,—and at last—he kissed me."

The last words were only breathed. She had often pictured herself confessing these things to him. But the humiliation in which she actually found herself before him was more than she had ever dreamed of, more than she could bear. All those great words of pity and mercy—all that implication of a moral atmosphere to which he could never attain—to end in this story! The effect of it, on herself, rather than on him, was what she had not foreseen.

Aldous raised himself slowly.

"And when did this happen?" he asked after a moment.

"I told you—the night of the ball—of the murder," she said with a shiver; "we saw Hurd cross the avenue. I meant to have told you everything at once."

"And you gave up that intention?" he asked her, when he had waited a little for more, and nothing came.

She turned upon him with a flash of the old defiance.

"How could I think of my own affairs?"

"Or of mine?" he said bitterly.

She made no answer.

Aldous got up and walked to the chimney-piece. He was very pale, but his eyes were bright and sparkling. When she looked up at him at last she saw that her task was done. His scorn—his resentment—were they not the expiation, the penalty she had looked forward to all along?—and with that determination to bear them calmly? Yet, now that they were there in front of her, they stung.

"So that—for all those weeks—while you were letting me write as I did, while you were letting me conceive you and your action as I did, you had this on your mind? You never gave me a hint; you let me plead; you let me regard you as wrapped up in the unselfish end; you sent me those letters of his—those most misleading letters!—and all the time—"

"But I meant to tell you—I always meant to tell you," she cried passionately. "I would never have gone on with a secret like that—not for your sake—but for my own."

"Yet you did go on so long," he said steadily; "and my agony of mind during those weeks—my feeling towards you—my—"

He broke off, wrestling with himself. As for her, she had fallen back in her chair, physically incapable of anything more.

He walked over to her side and took up his hat.

"You have done me wrong," he said, gazing down upon her. "I pray God you may not do yourself a greater wrong in the future! Give me leave to write to you once more, or to send my friend Edward Hallin to see you. Then I will not trouble you again."

He waited, but she could give him no answer. Her form as she lay there in this physical and moral abasement printed itself upon his heart. Yet he felt no desire whatever to snatch the last touch—the last kiss—that wounded passion so often craves. Inwardly, and without words, he said farewell to her. She heard his steps across the room; the door shut; she was alone—and free.



BOOK III.

"O Neigung, sage, wie hast du so tief Im Herzen dich verstecket? Wer hat dich, die verborgen schlief, Gewecket?"



CHAPTER I.

"Don't suppose that I feel enthusiastic or sentimental about the 'claims of Labour,'" said Wharton, smiling to the lady beside him. "You may get that from other people, but not from me. I am not moral enough to be a fanatic. My position is simplicity itself. When things are inevitable, I prefer to be on the right side of them, and not on the wrong. There is not much more in it than that. I would rather be on the back of the 'bore' for instance, as it sweeps up the tidal river, than the swimmer caught underneath it."

"Well, that is intelligible," said Lady Selina Farrell, looking at her neighbour, as she crumbled her dinner-roll. To crumble your bread at dinner is a sign of nervousness, according to Sydney Smith, who did it with both hands when he sat next an Archbishop; yet no one for a good many years past had ever suspected Lady Selina of nervousness, though her powers had probably been tried before now by the neighbourhood of many Primates, Catholic and Anglican. For Lady Selina went much into society, and had begun it young.

"Still, you know," she resumed after a moment's pause—"you play enthusiasm in public—I suppose you must."

"Oh! of course," said Wharton, indifferently. "That is in the game."

"Why should it be—always? If you are a leader of the people, why don't you educate them? My father says that bringing feeling into politics is like making rhymes in one's account book."

"Well, when you have taught the masses how not to feel," said Wharton, laughing, "we will follow your advice. Meanwhile it is our brains and their feelings that do the trick. And by the way, Lady Selina, are you always so cool? If you saw the Revolution coming to-morrow into the garden of Alresford House, would you go to the balcony and argue?"

"I devoutly hope there would be somebody ready to do something more to the point," said Lady Selina, hastily. "But of course we have enthusiasms too."

"What, the Flag—and the Throne—that kind of thing?"

The ironical attention which Wharton began at this moment to devote to the selection of an olive annoyed his companion.

"Yes," she repeated emphatically, "the Flag and the Throne—all that has made England great in the past. But we know very well that they are not your enthusiasms."

Wharton's upper lip twitched a little.

"And you are quite sure that Busbridge Towers has nothing to do with it?" he said suddenly, looking round upon her.

Busbridge Towers was the fine ancestral seat which belonged to Lady Selina's father, that very respectable and ancient peer, Lord Alresford, whom an ungrateful party had unaccountably omitted—for the first time—from the latest Conservative administration.

"Of course we perfectly understand," replied Lady Selina, scornfully, "that your side—and especially your Socialist friends, put down all that we do and say to greed and selfishness. It is our misfortune—hardly our fault."

"Not at all," said Wharton, quietly, "I was only trying to convince you that it is a little difficult to drive feeling out of politics. Do you suppose our host succeeds? You perceive?—this is a Radical house—and a Radical banquet?"

He pushed the menu towards her significantly. Then his eye travelled with its usual keen rapidity over the room, over the splendid dinner-table, with its display of flowers and plate, and over the assembled guests. He and Lady Selina were dining at the hospitable board of a certain rich manufacturer, who drew enormous revenues from the west, had formed part of the Radical contingent of the last Liberal ministry, and had especially distinguished himself by a series of uncompromising attacks on the ground landlords of London.

Lady Selina sighed.

"It is all a horrible tangle," she said, "and what the next twenty years will bring forth who can tell? Oh! one moment, Mr. Wharton, before I forget. Are you engaged for Saturday week?"

He drew a little note-book out of his pocket and consulted it. It appeared that he was not engaged.

"Then will you dine with us?" She lightly mentioned the names of four or five distinguished guests, including the Conservative Premier of the day. Wharton made her a little ceremonious bow.

"I shall be delighted. Can you trust me to behave?"

Lady Selina's smile made her his match for the moment.

"Oh! we can defend ourselves!" she said. "By the way I think you told me that Mr. Raeburn was not a friend of yours."

"No," said Wharton, facing her look with coolness. "If you have asked Mr. Raeburn for the 23rd, let me crave your leave to cancel that note in my pocket-book. Not for my sake, you understand, at all."

She had difficulty in concealing her curiosity. But his face betrayed nothing. It always seemed to her that his very dark and straight eyebrows, so obtrusive and unusual as compared with the delicacy of the features, of the fair skin and light brown curls, made it easy for him to wear any mask he pleased. By their mere physical emphasis they drew attention away from the subtler and more revealing things of expression.

"They say," she went on, "that he is sure to do well in the House, if only he can be made to take interest enough in the party. But one of his admirers told me that he was not at all anxious to accept this post they have just given him. He only did it to please his grandfather. My father thinks Lord Maxwell much aged this year. He is laid up now, with a chill of some sort I believe. Mr. Raeburn will have to make haste if he is to have any career in the Commons. But you can see he cares very little about it. All his friends tell me they find him changed since that unlucky affair last year. By the way, did you ever see that girl?"

"Certainly. I was staying in her father's house while the engagement was going on."

"Were you!" said Lady Selina, eagerly, "and what did you think of her?"

"Well, in the first place," said Wharton, slowly, "she is beautiful—you knew that?"

Lady Selina nodded.

"Yes. Miss Raeburn, who has told me most of what I know, always throws in a shrug and a 'but' when you ask about her looks. However, I have seen a photograph of her, so I can judge for myself. It seemed to me a beauty that men perhaps would admire more than women."

Wharton devoted himself to his green peas, and made no reply. Lady Selina glanced at him sharply. She herself was by no means a beauty. But neither was she plain. She had a long, rather distinguished face, with a marked nose and a wide thin-lipped mouth. Her plentiful fair hair, a little dull and ashy in colour, was heaped up above her forehead in infinitesimal curls and rolls which did great credit to her maid, and gave additional height to the head and length to a thin white neck. Her light blue eyes were very direct and observant. Their expression implied both considerable knowledge of the world and a natural inquisitiveness. Many persons indeed were of opinion that Lady Selina wished to know too much about you and were on their guard when she approached.

"You admired her very much, I see," she resumed, as Wharton still remained silent.

"Oh, yes. We talked Socialism, and then I defended her poacher for her."

"Oh, I remember. And it is really true, as Miss Raeburn says, that she broke it off because she could not get Lord Maxwell and Mr. Raeburn to sign the petition for the poacher?"

"Somewhere about true," said Wharton, carelessly.

"Miss Raeburn always gives the same account; you can never get anything else out of her. But I sometimes wonder whether it is the whole truth. You think she was sincere?"

"Well, she gave up Maxwell Court and thirty thousand a year," he replied drily. "I should say she had at least earned the benefit of the doubt."

"I mean," said Lady Selina, "was she in love with anybody else, and was the poacher an excuse?"

She turned upon him as she spoke—a smiling, self-possessed person—a little spoilt by those hard, inquisitive eyes.

"No, I think not," said Wharton, throwing his head back to meet her scrutiny. "If so, nothing has been heard of him yet. Miss Boyce has been at St. Edward's Hospital for the last year."

"To learn nursing? It is what all the women do nowadays, they tell me, who can't get on with their relations or their lovers. Do you suppose it is such a very hard life?"

"I don't want to try!" said Wharton. "Do you?"

She evaded his smile.

"What is she going to do when she has done her training?"

"Settle down and nurse among the poor, I believe."

"Magnificent, no doubt, but hardly business, from her point of view. How much more she might have done for the poor with thirty thousand a year! And any woman could put up with Aldous Raeburn."

Wharton shrugged his shoulders.

"We come back to those feelings, Lady Selina, you think so badly of."

She laughed.

"Well, but feelings must be intelligible. And this seems so small a cause. However, were you there when it was broken off?"

"No; I have never seen her since the day of the poacher's trial."

"Oh! So she has gone into complete seclusion from all her friends?"

"That I can't answer for. I can only tell you my own experience."

Lady Selina bethought herself of a great many more questions to ask, but somehow did not ask them. The talk fell upon politics, which lasted till the hostess gave the signal, and Lady Selina, gathering up her fan and gloves, swept from the room next after the Countess at the head of the table, while a host of elderly ladies, wives of ministers and the like, stood meekly by to let her pass.

As he sat down again, Wharton made the entry of the dinner at Alresford House, to which he had just promised himself, a little plainer. It was the second time in three weeks that Lady Selina had asked him, and he was well aware that several other men at this dinner-table, of about the same standing and prospects as himself, would be very glad to be in his place. Lady Selina, though she was unmarried, and not particularly handsome or particularly charming, was a personage—and knew it. As the mistress of her father's various fine houses, and the kinswoman of half the great families of England, she had ample social opportunities, and made, on the whole, clever use of them. She was not exactly popular, but in her day she had been extremely useful to many, and her invitations were prized. Wharton had been introduced to her at the beginning of this, his second session, had adopted with her the easy, aggressive, "personal" manner—which, on the whole, was his natural manner towards women—and had found it immediately successful.

When he had replaced his pocket-book, he found himself approached by a man on his own side of the table, a member of Parliament like himself, with whom he was on moderately friendly terms.

"Your motion comes on next Friday, I think," said the new-comer.

Wharton nodded.

"It'll be a beastly queer division," said the other—"a precious lot of cross-voting."

"That'll be the way with that kind of question for a good while to come—don't you think"—said Wharton, smiling, "till we get a complete reorganisation of parties?"

As he leaned back in his chair, enjoying his cigarette, his half-shut eyes behind the curls of smoke made a good-humoured but contemptuous study of his companion.

Mr. Bateson was a young manufacturer, recently returned to Parliament, and newly married. He had an open, ruddy face, spoilt by an expression of chronic perplexity, which was almost fretfulness. Not that the countenance was without shrewdness; but it suggested that the man had ambitions far beyond his powers of performance, and already knew himself to be inadequate.

"Well, I shouldn't wonder if you get a considerable vote," he resumed, after a pause; "it's like women's suffrage. People will go on voting for this kind of thing, till there seems a chance of getting it. Then!"

"Ah, well!" said Wharton, easily, "I see we shan't get you."

"I!—vote for an eight-hours day, by local and trade option! In my opinion I might as well vote for striking the flag on the British Empire at once! It would be the death-knell of all our prosperity."

Wharton's artistic ear disliked the mixture of metaphor, and he frowned slightly.

Mr. Bateson hurried on. He was already excited, and had fallen upon Wharton as a prey.

"And you really desire to make it penal for us manufacturers—for me in my industry—in spite of all the chances and changes of the market, to work my men more than eight hours a day—even if they wish it!"

"We must get our decision, our majority of the adult workers in any given district in favour of an eight-hours day," said Wharton, blandly; "then when they have voted for it, the local authority will put the Act in motion."

"And my men—conceivably—may have voted in the minority, against any such tomfoolery; yet, when the vote is given, it will be a punishable offence for them, and me, to work overtime? You actually mean that; how do you propose to punish us?"

"Well," said Wharton, relighting his cigarette, "that is a much debated point. Personally, I am in favour of imprisonment rather than fine."

The other bounded on his chair.

"You would imprison me for working overtime—with willing men!"

Wharton eyed him with smiling composure. Two or three other men—an old general, the smart private secretary of a cabinet minister, and a well-known permanent official at the head of one of the great spending departments—who were sitting grouped at the end of the table a few feet away, stopped their conversation to listen.

"Except in cases of emergency, which are provided for under the Act," said Wharton. "Yes, I should imprison you, with the greatest pleasure in life. Eight hours plus overtime is what we are going to stop, at all hazards!"

A flash broke from his blue eyes. Then he tranquilly resumed his smoking.

The young manufacturer flushed with angry agitation.

"But you must know, it is inconceivable that you should not know, that the whole thing is stark staring lunacy. In our business, trade is declining, the export falling every year, the imports from France steadily advancing. And you are going to make us fight a country where men work eleven hours a day, for lower wages, with our hands tied behind our backs by legislation of this kind? Well, you know," he threw himself back in his chair with a contemptuous laugh, "there can be only one explanation. You and your friends, of course, have banished political economy to Saturn—and you suppose that by doing so you get rid of it for all the rest of the world. But I imagine it will beat you, all the same!"

He stopped in a heat. As usual what he found to say was not equal to what he wanted to say, and beneath his anger with Wharton was the familiar fuming at his own lack of impressiveness.

"Well, I dare say," said Wharton, serenely. "However, let's take your 'political economy' a moment, and see if I can understand what you mean by it. There never were two words that meant all things to all men so disreputably!"

And thereupon to the constant accompaniment of his cigarette, and with the utmost composure and good temper, he began to "heckle" his companion, putting questions, suggesting perfidious illustrations, extracting innocent admissions, with a practised shrewdness and malice, which presently left the unfortunate Bateson floundering in a sea of his own contradictions, and totally unable for the moment to attach any rational idea whatever to those great words of his favourite science, wherewith he was generally accustomed to make such triumphant play, both on the platform and in the bosom of the family.

The permanent official round the corner watched the unequal fight with attentive amusement. Once when it was a question of Mill's doctrine of cost of production as compared with that of a leading modern collectivist, he leant forward and supplied a correction of something Wharton had said. Wharton instantly put down his cigarette and addressed him in another tone. A rapid dialogue passed between them, the dialogue of experts, sharp, allusive, elliptical, in the midst of which the host gave the signal for joining the ladies.

"Well, all I know is," said Bateson, as he got up, "that these kinds of questions, if you and your friends have your way, will wreck the Liberal party before long—far more effectually than anything Irish has ever done. On these things some of us will fight, if it must come to that."

Wharton laughed.

"It would be a national misfortune if you didn't give us a stiff job," he said, with an airy good-humour which at once made the other's blustering look ridiculous.

"I wonder what that fellow is going to do in the House," said the permanent official to his companion as they went slowly upstairs, Wharton being some distance ahead. "People are all beginning to talk of him as a coming man, though nobody quite knows why, as yet. They tell me he frames well in speaking, and will probably make a mark with his speech next Friday. But his future seems to me very doubtful. He can only become a power as the head of a new Labour party. But where is the party? They all want to be kings. The best point in his favour is that they are likely enough to take a gentleman if they must have a leader. But there still remains the question whether he can make anything out of the material."

"I hope to God he can't!" said the old general, grimly; "it is these town-chatterers of yours that will bring the Empire about our heads before we've done. They've begun it already, wherever they saw a chance."

* * * * *

In the drawing-room Wharton devoted himself for a few minutes to his hostess, a little pushing woman, who confided to his apparently attentive ear a series of grievances as to the bad manners of the great ladies of their common party, and the general evil plight of Liberalism in London from the social point of view.

"Either they give themselves airs—rediculous airs!—or they admit everybody!" she said, with a lavish use of white shoulders and scarlet fan by way of emphasis. "My husband feels it just as much as I do. It is a real misfortune for the party that its social affairs should be so villainously managed. Oh! I dare say you don't mind, Mr. Wharton, because you are a Socialist. But, I assure you, those of us who still believe in the influence of the best people don't like it."

A point whence Wharton easily led her through a series of spiteful anecdotes bearing on her own social mishaps and rebuffs, which were none the less illuminating because of the teller's anxious effort to give them a dignified and disinterested air. Then, when neither she nor her plight were any longer amusing, he took his leave, exchanging another skirmishing word or two on the staircase with Lady Selina, who it appeared was "going on" as he was, and to the same house.

In a few minutes his hansom landed him at the door of a great mansion in Berkeley Square, where a huge evening party was proceeding, given by one of those Liberal ladies whom his late hostess had been so freely denouncing. The lady and the house belonged to a man who had held high office in the late Administration.

As he made his way slowly to the top of the crowded stairs, the stately woman in white satin and diamonds who was "receiving" on the landing marked him, and when his name was announced she came forward a step or two. Nothing could have been more flattering than the smile with which she gave him her gloved hand to touch.

"Have you been out of town all these Sundays?" she said to him, with the slightest air of soft reproach. "I am always at home, you know—I told you so!"

She spoke with the ease of one who could afford to make whatever social advances she pleased. Wharton excused himself, and they chatted a little in the intervals of her perpetual greetings to the mounting crowd. She and he had met at a famous country house in the Easter recess, and her aristocrat's instinct for all that gives savour and sharpness to the dish of life had marked him at once.

"Sir Hugh wants you to come down and see us in Sussex," she said, stretching her white neck a little to speak after him, as he was at last carried through the drawing-room door by the pressure behind him. "Will you?"

He threw back an answer which she rather took for granted than heard, for she nodded and smiled through it—stiffening her delicate-face the moment afterwards to meet the timid remarks of one of her husband's constituents—asked by Sir Hugh in the streets that afternoon—who happened to present her with the next hand to shake.

Inside, Wharton soon found himself brought up against the ex-Secretary of State himself, who greeted him cordially, and then bantered him a little on his coming motion.

"Oh, I shall be interested to see what you make of it. But, you know, it has no actuality—never can have—till you can agree among yourselves. You say you want the same thing—I dare say you'll all swear it on Friday—but really—"

The statesman shook his head pleasantly.

"The details are a little vague still, I grant you," said Wharton, smiling.

"And you think the principle matters twopence without the details? I have always found that the difficulty with the Christian command, 'Be ye perfect.' The principle doesn't trouble me at all!"

The swaying of the entering throng parted the two speakers, and for a second or two the portly host followed with his eye the fair profile and lightly-built figure of the younger man as they receded from him in the crowd. It was in his mind that the next twenty years, whether this man or that turned out to be important or no, must see an enormous quickening of the political pace. He himself was not conscious of any jealousy of the younger men; but neither did he see among them any commanding personality. This young fellow, with his vivacity, his energy, and his Socialist whims, was interesting enough; and his problem was interesting—the problem of whether he could make a party out of the heterogeneous group of which he was turning out to be indisputably the ablest member. But what was there certain or inevitable about his future after all? And it was the same with all the rest. Whereas the leaders of the past had surely announced themselves beyond mistake from the beginning. He was inclined to think, however, that we were levelling up rather than levelling down. The world grew too clever, and leadership was more difficult every day.

Meanwhile Wharton found his progress through these stately rooms extremely pleasant. He was astonished at the multitude of people he knew, at the numbers of faces that smiled upon him. Presently, after half an hour of hard small talk, he found himself for a moment without an acquaintance, leaning against an archway between two rooms, and free to watch the throng. Self-love, "that froward presence, like a chattering child within us," was all alert and happy. A feeling of surprise, too, which had not yet worn away. A year before he had told Marcella Boyce, and with conviction, that he was an outcast from his class. He smiled now at that past naivete which had allowed him to take the flouts of his country neighbours and his mother's unpopularity with her aristocratic relations for an index of the way in which "society" in general would be likely to treat him and his opinions. He now knew, on the contrary, that those opinions had been his best advertisement. Few people, it appeared, were more in demand among the great than those who gave it out that they would, if they could, abolish the great.

"It's because they're not enough afraid of us—yet," he said to himself, not without spleen. "When we really get to business—if we ever do—I shall not be coming to Lady Cradock's parties."

"Mr. Wharton, do you ever do such a frivolous thing as go to the theatre?" said a pretty, languishing creature at his elbow, the wife of a London theatrical manager. "Suppose you come and see us in 'The Minister's Wooing,' first night next Saturday. I've got one seat in my box, for somebody very agreeable. Only it must be somebody who can appreciate my frocks!"

"I should be charmed," said Wharton. "Are the frocks so adorable?"

"Adorable! Then I may write you a note? You don't have your horrid Parliament that night, do you?" and she fluttered on.

"I think you don't know my younger daughter, Mr. Wharton?" said a severe voice at his elbow.

He turned and saw an elderly matron with the usual matronly cap and careworn countenance putting forward a young thing in white, to whom he bowed with great ceremony. The lady was the wife of a north-country magnate of very old family, and one of the most exclusive of her kind in London. The daughter, a vision of young shyness and bloom, looked at him with frightened eyes as he leant against the wall beside her and began to talk. She wished he would go away and let her get to the girl friend who was waiting for her and signalling to her across the room. But in a minute or two she had forgotten to wish anything of the kind. The mixture of audacity with a perfect self-command in the manner of her new acquaintance, that searching half-mocking look, which saw everything in detail, and was always pressing beyond the generalisations of talk and manners, the lightness and brightness of the whole aspect, of the curls, the eyes, the flexible determined mouth, these things arrested her. She began to open her virgin heart, first in protesting against attack, then in confession, till in ten minutes her white breast was heaving under the excitement of her own temerity and Wharton knew practically all about her, her mingled pleasure and remorse in "going out," her astonishment at the difference between the world as it was this year, and the world as it had been last, when she was still in the school-room—her Sunday-school—her brothers—her ideals—for she was a little nun at heart—her favourite clergyman—and all the rest of it.

"I say, Wharton, come and dine, will you, Thursday, at the House—small party—meet in my room?"

So said one of the party whips, from behind into his ear. The speaker was a popular young aristocrat who in the preceding year had treated the member for West Brookshire with chilliness. Wharton turned—to consider a moment—then gave a smiling assent.

"All right!" said the other, withdrawing his hand from Wharton's shoulder—"good-night!—two more of these beastly crushes to fight through till I can get to my bed, worse luck! Are any of your fellows here to-night?"

Wharton shook his head.

"Too austere, I suppose?"

"A question of dress coats, I should think," said Wharton, drily.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"And this calls itself a party gathering—in a radical and democratic house—what a farce it all is!"

"Agreed! good-night."

And Wharton moved on, just catching as he did so the eyes of his new girl acquaintance looking back at him from a distant door. Their shy owner withdrew them instantly, coloured, and passed out of sight.

At the same moment a guest entered by the same door, a tall grave man in the prime of life, but already grey haired. Wharton, to his surprise, recognised Aldous Raeburn, and saw also that the master of the house had him by the arm. They came towards him, talking. The crowd prevented him from getting effectually out of their way, but he turned aside and took up a magazine lying on a bookcase near.

"And you really think him a trifle better?" said the ex-minister.

"Oh, yes, better—certainly better—but I am afraid he will hardly get back to work this session—the doctors talk of sending him away at once."

"Ah, well," said the other, smiling, "we don't intend it seems to let you send anything important up to the Lords yet awhile, so there will be time for him to recruit."

"I wish I was confident about the recruiting," said Raeburn, sadly. "He has lost much strength. I shall go with them to the Italian lakes at the end of next week, see them settled and come back at once."

"Shall you miss a sitting of the commission?" asked his host. Both he and Raeburn were members of an important Labour Commission appointed the year before by the new Conservative government.

"Hardly, I think," said Raeburn, "I am particularly anxious not to miss D——'s evidence."

And they fell talking a little about the Commission and the witnesses recently examined before it. Wharton, who was wedged in by a group of ladies, and could not for the moment move, heard most of what they were saying, much against his will. Moreover Raeburn's tone of quiet and masterly familiarity with what he and his companion were discussing annoyed him. There was nothing in the world that he himself would more eagerly have accepted than a seat on that Commission.

"Ah! there is Lady Cradock!" said Raeburn, perceiving his hostess across a sea of intervening faces, and responding to her little wave of the hand. "I must go and get a few words with her, and then take my aunt away."

As he made his way towards her, he suddenly brushed against Wharton, who could not escape. Raeburn looked up, recognised the man he had touched, flushed slightly and passed on. A bystander would have supposed them strangers to each other.



CHAPTER II.

Two or three minutes later, Wharton was walking down a side street towards Piccadilly. After all the flattering incidents of the evening, the chance meeting with which it concluded had jarred unpleasantly. Confound the fellow! Was he the first man in the world who had been thrown over by a girl because he had been discovered to be a tiresome pedant? For even supposing Miss Boyce had described that little scene in the library at Mellor to her fiance at the moment of giving him his dismissal—and the year before, by the help of all the news that reached him about the broken engagement, by the help still more of the look, or rather the entire absence of look wherewith Raeburn had walked past his greeting and his outstretched hand in a corridor of the House, on the first occasion of their meeting after the news had become public property, Wharton was inclined to think she had—what then? No doubt the stern moralist might have something to say on the subject of taking advantage of a guest's position to tamper with another man's betrothed. If so, the stern moralist would only show his usual incapacity to grasp the actual facts of flesh and blood. What chance would he or any one else have had with Marcella Boyce, if she had happened to be in love with the man she had promised to marry? That little trifle had been left out in the arrangement. It might have worked through perfectly well without; as it happened it had broken down. Realities had broken it down. Small blame to them!

"I stood for truth!" he said to himself with a kind of rage—"that moment when I held her in the library, she lived.—Raeburn offered her a platform, a position; I made her think, and feel. I helped her to know herself. Our relation was not passion; it stood on the threshold—but it was real—a true relation so far as it went. That it went no farther was due again to circumstances—realities—of another kind. That he should scorn and resent my performance at Mellor is natural enough. If we were in France he would call me out and I should give him satisfaction with all the pleasure in life. But what am I about? Are his ways mine? I should have nothing left but to shoot myself to-morrow if they were!"

He walked on swiftly, angrily rating himself for those symptoms of a merely false and conventional conscience which were apt to be roused in him by contact with Aldous Raeburn.

"Has he not interfered with my freedom—stamped his pedantic foot on me—ever since we were boys together! I have owed him one for many years—now I have paid it. Let him take the chances of war!"

Then, driven on by an irritation not to be quieted, he began against his will to think of those various occasions on which he and Aldous Raeburn had crossed each other in the past—of that incident in particular which Miss Raeburn had roughly recalled to Lady Winterbourne's reluctant memory.

Well, and what of it? It had occurred when Wharton was a lad of twenty-one, and during an interval of some months when Aldous Raeburn, who had left Cambridge some three years before, and was already the man of importance, had shown a decided disposition to take up the brilliant, unmanageable boy, whom the Levens, among other relations, had already washed their hands of.

"What did he do it for?" thought Wharton. "Philanthropic motives of course. He is one of the men who must always be saving their souls, and the black sheep of the world come in handy for the purpose. I remember I was flattered then. It takes one some time to understand the workings of the Hebraistic conscience!"

Yes—as it galled him to recollect—he had shown great plasticity for a time. He was then in the middle of his Oxford years, and Raeburn's letters and Raeburn's influence had certainly pulled him through various scrapes that might have been disastrous. Then—a little later—he could see the shooting lodge on the moors above Loch Etive, where he and Raeburn, Lord Maxwell, Miss Raeburn, and a small party had spent the August of his twenty-first birthday. Well—that surly keeper, and his pretty wife who had been Miss Raeburn's maid—could anything be more inevitable? A hard and jealous husband, and one of the softest, most sensuous natures that ever idleness made love to. The thing was in the air!—in the summer, in the blood—as little to be resisted as the impulse to eat when you are hungry, or drink when you thirst. Besides, what particular harm had been done, what particular harm could have been done with such a Cerberus of a husband? As to the outcry which had followed one special incident, nothing could have been more uncalled for, more superfluous. Aldous had demanded contrition, had said strong things with the flashing eyes, the set mouth of a Cato. And the culprit had turned obstinate—would repent nothing—not for the asking. Everything was arguable, and Renan's doubt as to whether he or Theophile Gautier were in the right of it, would remain a doubt to all time—that was all Raeburn could get out of him. After which the Hebraist friend of course had turned his back on the offender, and there was an end of it.