That letter, together with Mr. Boyce's posthumous note, which
contained nothing, indeed, but a skilful appeal to neighbourliness and
old family friendship, written in the best style of the ex-Balkan
Commissioner, had naturally astonished him greatly. He saw at once what
_she_ would perceive in it, and turned impatiently from speculation as
to what Mr. Boyce might actually have meant, to the infinitely more
important matter, how she would take her father's act. Never had he
written anything with greater anxiety than he devoted to his letter to
Mrs. Boyce. There was in him now a craving he could not stay, to be
brought near to her again, to know how her life was going. It had first
raised its head in him since he knew that her existence and Wharton's
were finally parted, and had but gathered strength from the
self-critical loneliness and tedium of these later months.

Mrs. Boyce's reply couched in terms at once stately and grateful, which
accepted his offer of service on her own and her daughter's behalf, had
given him extraordinary pleasure. He turned it over again and again,
wondering what part or lot Marcella might have had in it, attributing to
her this cordiality or that reticence; picturing the two women together
in their black dresses--the hotel, the _pergola_, the cliff--all of
which he himself knew well. Finally, he went up to town, saw Mr. French,
and acquainted himself with the position and prospects of the Mellor
estate, feeling himself a sort of intruder, yet curiously happy in the
business. It was wonderful what that poor sickly fellow had been able to
do in the last two years; yet his thoughts fell rather into amused
surmise as to what _she_ would find it in her restless mind to do in the
_next_ two years.

Nevertheless, all the time, the resolution of which he had spoken to
Hallin seemed to himself unshaken. He recognised and adored the womanly
growth and deepening which had taken place in her; he saw that she
wished to show him kindness. But he thought he could trust himself now
and henceforward not to force upon her a renewed suit for which there
was in his eyes no real or abiding promise of happiness.

Marcella and her mother had now been at home some three or four days,
and he was just about to walk over to Mellor for his first interview
with them. A great deal of the merely formal business consequent on Mr.
Boyce's death had been already arranged by himself and Mr. French. Yet
he had to consult Marc