ave liked dearly to see and to exhibit the heroine. Mrs. Lane in
particular, the hostess of the House of Commons dinner, felt that she
had claims, and was one of the first to call at Lady Winterbourne's and
see her guest. She soon discovered that Marcella had no intention
whatever of playing the lion; and must, in fact, avoid excitement and
fatigue. But she had succeeded in getting the girl to come to her once
or twice of an afternoon to meet two or three people. It was better for
the wounded arm that its owner should walk than drive; and Mrs. Lane
lived at a convenient distance, at a house in Piccadilly, just across
the Green Park.

Here then, as in James Street, Marcella had met in discreet succession
a few admiring and curious persons, and had tasted some of the smaller
sweets of fame. But the magnet that drew her to the Lanes' house had
been no craving for notoriety; at the present moment she was totally
indifferent to what perhaps constitutionally she might have liked; the
attraction had been simply the occasional presence there of Harry
Wharton. He excited, puzzled, angered, and commanded her more than ever.
She could not keep herself away from the chance of meeting him. And Lady
Winterbourne neither knew him, nor apparently wished to know him--a fact
which probably tended to make Marcella obstinate.

Yet what pleasure had there been after all in these meetings! Again and
again she had seen him surrounded there by pretty and fashionable women,
with some of whom he was on amazingly easy terms, while with all of them
he talked their language, and so far as she could see to a great extent
lived their life. The contradiction of the House of Commons evening
returned upon her perpetually. She thought she saw in many of his new
friends a certain malicious triumph in the readiness with which the
young demagogue had yielded to their baits. No doubt they were at least
as much duped as he. Like Hallin, she did not believe, that at bottom he
was the man to let himself be held by silken bonds if it should be to
his interest to break them. But, meanwhile, his bearing among these
people--the claims they and their amusement made upon his time and his
mind--seemed to this girl, who watched them, with her dark, astonished
eyes, a kind of treachery to his place and his cause. It was something
she had never dreamed of; and it roused her contempt and irritation.

Then as to herself. He had been all eagerness in his enquiries after he