of the conservatory,
unnoticed by any of the group in the bow window.

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

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

"I wonder what you suppose it teaches?"

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

"You _think_," said Marcella, slowly, "that to live among the poor can
teach any one--any one that's _human_--to be _content_!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Aldous came back, with a somewhat slow and hesitating step, he
approached Marcella, who was standing silent by the win