sore over their trouble and her own impotence.

Meantime for some wounds, at any rate, time had brought swift cautery!
Not three days after her final interview with Wharton, while the
catastrophe in the Labour party was still in every one's mouth, and the
air was full of bitter speeches and recriminations, Hallin one evening
laid down his newspaper with a sudden startled gesture, and then pushed
it over to Marcella. There, in the columns devoted to personal news of
various sorts, appeared the announcement:

"A marriage has been arranged between Mr. H.S. Wharfon, M.P. for West
Brookshire, and Lady Selina Farrell, only surviving daughter of Lord
Alresford. The ceremony will probably take place somewhere about Easter
next. Meanwhile Mr. Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his
exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest
by his medical advisers. He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start
for French Cochin China in a few days. Their object is to explore the
famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is
favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong. Mr. Wharton is paired
for the remainder of the session."

"Did you know anything of this?" said Hallin, with that careful
carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.

"Nothing," she said quietly.

Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled
depths of feeling, drove her on. She, too, put down the paper, and
laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight
laugh:

"But I was the last person to know. About a fortnight ago Mr. Wharton
proposed to me."

Hallin sprang from his chair, almost with a shout. "And you refused
him?"

She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or
consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of
hers had grown moist.

Hallin went straight over to her.

"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed of
his outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face.
"There--I am an idiot! We won't say a word more--except about Lady
Selina. Have you seen her?"

"Three or four times."

"What is she like?"

Marcella hesitated.

"Is she fat--and forty?" said Hallin, fervently--she beat him?"

"Not at all. She is very thin--thirty-five, elegant, terribly of her own
opinion--and makes a great parade of 'papa.'"

She looked round at him, unsteadily,