g to go back to work. Her mood
was too restless and transitional to leave her long in love with comfort
and folded hands. She told herself that she had no longer any place
among the rich and important people of this world; far away beyond these
parks and palaces, in the little network of dark streets she knew, lay
the problems and the cares that were really hers, through which her
heart was somehow wrestling--must somehow wrestle--its passionate way.
But her wrenched arm was still in a sling, and was, moreover,
under-going treatment at the hands of a clever specialist; and she could
neither go home, as her mother had wished her to do, nor return to her
nursing--a state of affairs which of late had made her a little silent
and moody.

On the whole she found her chief pleasure in the two weekly visits she
paid to the woman whose life, it now appeared, she _had_ saved--probably
at some risk of her own. The poor victim would go scarred and maimed
through what remained to her of existence. But she lived; and--as
Marcella and Lady Winterbourne and Raeburn had abundantly made up their
minds--would be permanently cared for and comforted in the future.

Alas! there were many things that stood between Marcella and true rest.
She had been woefully disappointed, nay wounded, as to the results of
that tragic half-hour which for the moment had seemed to throw a bridge
of friendship over those painful, estranging memories lying between her
and Aldous Raeburn. He had called two or three times since she had been
with Lady Winterbourne; he had done his best to make her inevitable
appearance as a witness in the police-court, as easy to her as possible;
the man who had stood by her through such a scene could do no less, in
common politeness and humanity. But each time they met his manner had
been formal and constrained; there had been little conversation; and she
had been left to the bitterness of feeling that she had made a strange
if not unseemly advance, of which he must think unkindly, since he had
let it count with him so little.

Childishly, angrily--_she wanted him to be friends!_ Why shouldn't he?
He would certainly marry Betty Macdonald in time, whatever Mr. Hallin
might say. Then why not put his pride away and be generous? Their future
lives must of necessity touch each other, for they were bound to the
same neighbourhood, the same spot of earth. She knew herself to be her
father's heiress. Mellor must be hers some day; and bef