h her Merritt
blood--could be unlucky.

Marcella went about all day under a vague sense of impending
trouble--the result, no doubt, of that intolerable threat of her
father's, against which she was, after all, so defenceless.

But whatever it was, it made her all the more nervous and sensitive
about the Hallins; about her one true friend, to whom she was slowly
revealing herself, even without speech; whose spiritual strength had
been guiding and training her; whose physical weakness had drawn to him
the maternal, the _spending_ instincts which her nursing life had so
richly developed.

She strolled down the drive to meet the post. But there were no letters
from London, and she came in, inclined to be angry indeed with Louis
Craven for deserting her, but saying to herself at the same time that
she must have heard if anything had gone wrong.

An hour or so later, just as the October evening was closing in, she was
sitting dreaming over a dim wood-fire in the drawing-room. Her father,
as might have been expected, had been very tired and comatose all day.
Her mother was with him; the London nurse was to sit up, and Marcella
felt herself forlorn and superfluous.

Suddenly, in the silence of the house, she heard the front-door bell
ring. There was a step in the hall--she sprang up--the door opened, and
William, with fluttered emphasis, announced--

"Lord Maxwell!"

In the dusk she could just see his tall form--the short pause as he
perceived her--then her hand was in his, and the paralysing astonishment
of that first instant had disappeared under the grave emotion of his
look.

"Will you excuse me," he said, "for coming at this hour? But I am
afraid you have heard nothing yet of our bad news--and Hallin himself
was anxious I should come and tell you. Miss Hallin could not write, and
Mr. Craven, I was to tell you, had been ill for a week with a chill. You
haven't then seen any account of the lecture in the papers?"

"No; I have looked yesterday and to-day in our paper, but there was
nothing--"

"Some of the Radical papers reported it. I hoped you might have seen it.
But when we got down here this afternoon, and there was nothing from
you, both Miss Hallin and Edward felt sure you had not heard--and I
walked over. It was a most painful, distressing scene, and he--is very
ill."

"But you have brought him to the Court?" she said trembling, lost in the
thought of Hallin, her quick breath coming and going. "He was ab