on of things--of which, however, she seldom
spoke--had been actively and even vehemently rationalist; and it had
been one of the chief sorenesses and shames of her life at Mellor that,
in order to suit his position as country squire, Richard Boyce had sunk
to what, in her eyes, were a hundred mean compliances with things
orthodox and established.

Then, in his last illness, he had finally broken away from her, and his
own past. "Evelyn, I should like to see a clergyman," he had said to
her in his piteous voice, "and I shall ask him to give me the
Sacrament." She had made every arrangement accordingly; but her bitter
soul could see nothing in the step but fear and hypocrisy; and he knew
it. And as he lay talking alone with the man whom they had summoned, two
or three nights before the end, she, sitting in the next room, had been
conscious of a deep and smarting jealousy. Had not the hard devotion of
twenty years made him at least her own? And here was this black-coated
reciter of incredible things stepping into her place. Only in death she
recovered him wholly. No priest interfered while he drew his last breath
upon her bosom.

And now Marcella! Yet the girl's voice and plea tugged at her withered
heart. She felt a dread of unknown softnesses--of being invaded and
weakened by things in her akin to her daughter, and so captured afresh.
Her mind fell upon the bare idea of a revival of the Maxwell engagement,
and caressed it.

Meanwhile Marcella stood dressing by the open window in the sunlight,
which filled the room with wavy reflections caught from the sea.
Fishing-boats were putting off from the beach, three hundred feet below
her; she could hear the grating of the keels, the songs of the boatmen.
On the little breakwater to the right an artist's white umbrella shone
in the sun; and a half-naked boy, poised on the bows of a boat moored
beside the painter, stood bent in the eager attitude of one about to
drop the bait into the blue wave below. His brown back burnt against the
water. Cliff, houses, sea, glowed in warmth and light; the air was full
of roses and orange-blossom; and to an English sense had already the
magic of summer.

And Marcella's hands, as she coiled and plaited her black hair, moved
with a new lightness; for the first time since her father's death her
look had its normal fire, crossed every now and then by something that
made her all softness and all woman. No! as her mother said, one could
not snub