d as to his appointment as executor prior to the drawing up
of the will. But you will no doubt hear from him at once, and as soon as
we know that he consents to act, we can proceed immediately to probate."

"Mamma, how _could_ he?" said Marcella, in a low, suffocated voice,
letting will and letter fall upon her knee.

"Did he give you no warning in that talk you had with him at Mellor?"
said Mrs. Boyce, after a minute's silence.

"Not the least," said Marcella, rising restlessly and beginning to walk
up and down. "He spoke to me about wishing to bring it on again--asked
me to let him write. I told him it was all done with--for ever! As to my
own feelings, I felt it was no use to speak of them; but I thought--I
_believed_, I had proved to him that Lord Maxwell had absolutely given
up all idea of such a thing; and that it was already probable he would
marry some one else. I told him I would rather disappear from every one
I knew than consent to it--he could only humiliate us all by saying a
word. And _now_, after that!--"

She stopped in her restless walk, pressing her hands miserably together.

"What _does_ he want with us and our affairs?" she broke out. "He
wishes, of course, to have no more to do with me. And now we force
him--_force_ him into these intimate relations. What can papa have said
in that letter to him? What _can_ he have said? Oh! it is unbearable!
Can't we write at once?"

She pressed her hands over her eyes in a passion of humiliation and
disgust. Mrs. Boyce watched her closely.

"We must wait, anyway, for his letter," she said. "It ought to be here
by to-morrow morning."

Marcella sank on a chair by an open glass door, her eyes wandering,
through the straggling roses growing against the wall of the stone
balcony outside, to the laughing purples and greens of the sea.

"Of course," she said unhappily, "it is most probable he will consent.
It would not be like him to refuse. But, mamma, you must write. _I_ must
write and beg him not to do it. It is quite simple. We can manage
everything for ourselves. Oh! how _could_ papa?" she broke out again in
a low wail, "how could he?"

Mrs. Boyce's lips tightened sharply. It seemed to her a foolish
question. _She_, at least, had had the experience of twenty years out of
which to answer it. Death had made no difference. She saw her husband's
character and her own seared and broken life with the same tragical
clearness; she felt the same gnawing of an affe