do--Mr. Wharton told me--so interesting!"

Marcella said nothing, and as to her looks the passage was dark. Lady
Selina thought her a very handsome but very _gauche_ young woman. Still,
_gauche_ or no, she had thrown over Aldous Raeburn and thirty thousand a
year; an act which, as Lady Selina admitted, put you out of the common
run.

"Do you know most of the people dining?" she enquired in her blandest
voice. "But no doubt you do. You are a great friend of Mr. Wharton's, I
think?"

"He stayed at our house last year," said Marcella, abruptly. "No, I
don't know anybody."

"Then shall I tell you? It makes it more interesting, doesn't it? It
ought to be a pleasant little party."

And the great lady lightly ran over the names. It seemed to Marcella
that most of them were very "smart" or very important. Some of the smart
names were vaguely known to her from Miss Raeburn's talk of last year;
and, besides, there were a couple of Tory Cabinet ministers and two or
three prominent members. It was all rather surprising.

At dinner she found herself between one of the Cabinet ministers and the
young and good-looking private secretary of the other. Both men were
agreeable, and very willing, besides, to take trouble with this unknown
beauty. The minister, who knew the Raeburns very well, was discussing
with himself all the time whether this was indeed the Miss Boyce of that
story. His suspicion and curiosity were at any rate sufficiently strong
to make him give himself much pains to draw her out.

Her own conversation, however, was much distracted by the attention she
could not help giving to her host and his surroundings. Wharton had Lady
Selina on his right, and the young and distinguished wife of Marcella's
minister on his left. At the other end of the table sat Mrs. Lane, doing
her duty spasmodically to Lord Alresford, who still, in a blind old age,
gave himself all the airs of the current statesman and possible premier.
But the talk, on the whole, was general--a gay and careless
give-and-take of parliamentary, social, and racing gossip, the ball
flying from one accustomed hand to another.

And Marcella could not get over the astonishment of Wharton's part in
it. She shut her eyes sometimes for an instant and tried to see him as
her girl's fancy had seen him at Mellor--the solitary, eccentric figure
pursued by the hatreds of a renounced Patricianate--bringing the enmity
of his own order as a pledge and offering to the Pl