frown which had now become habitual to
him, moved his lips once or twice without speaking; and at last made his
effort.

"I should think, Marcella, you must often regret by now the step you
took eighteen months ago!"

She grew pale.

"How regret it, papa?" she said, without looking up.

"Why, good God!" he said angrily; "I should think the reasons for regret
are plain enough. You threw over a man who was devoted to you, and could
have given you the finest position in the county, for the most
nonsensical reasons in the world--reasons that by now, I am certain, you
are ashamed of."

He saw her wince, and enjoyed his prerogative of weakness. In his normal
health he would never have dared so to speak to her. But of late, during
long fits of feverish brooding--intensified by her return home--he had
vowed to himself to speak his mind.

"Aren't you ashamed of them?" he repeated, as she was silent.

She looked up.

"I am not ashamed of anything I did to save Hurd, if that is what you
mean, papa."

Mr. Boyce's anger grew.

"Of course you know what everybody said?"

She stooped over her work again, and did not reply.

"It's no good being sullen over it," he said in exasperation; "I'm your
father, and I'm dying. I have a right to question you. It's my duty to
see something settled, if I can, before I go. Is it _true_ that all the
time you were attacking Raeburn about politics and the reprieve, and
what not, you were really behaving as you never ought to have behaved,
with Harry Wharton?"

He gave out the words with sharp emphasis, and, bending towards her, he
laid an emaciated hand upon her arm.

"What use is there, papa, in going back to these things?" she said,
driven to bay, her colour going and coming. "I may have been wrong in a
hundred ways, but you never understood that the real reason for it all
was that--that--I never was in love with Mr. Raeburn."

"Then why did you accept him?" He fell back against his pillows with a
jerk.

"As to that, I will confess my sins readily enough," she said, while her
lip trembled, and he saw the tears spring into her eyes. "I accepted him
for what you just now called his position in the county, though not
quite in that way either."

He was silent a little, then he began again in a voice which gradually
became unsteady from self-pity.

"Well, now look here! I have been thinking about this matter a great
deal--and God knows I've time to think and cause to think, consi