th me part
of the year."

The intonation in the words touched Aldous profoundly.

"Part of the year?" he said, astonished, yet not knowing how to question
her. "Mrs. Boyce will not make Mellor her home?"

"She would be thankful if she had never seen it," said Marcella,
quickly--"and she would never see it again if it weren't for me. It's
dreadful what she went through last year, when--when I was in London."

Her voice fell. Glancing up at him involuntarily, her eye looked with
dread for some chill, some stiffening in him. Probably he condemned her,
had always condemned her for deserting her home and her parents. But
instead she saw nothing but sympathy.

"Mrs. Boyce has had a hard life," he said, with grave feeling.

Marcella felt a tear leap, and furtively raised her handkerchief to
brush it away. Then, with a natural selfishness, her quick thought took
another turn. A wild yearning rose in her mind to tell him much more
than she had ever done in old days of the miserable home-circumstances
of her early youth; to lay stress on the mean unhappiness which had
depressed her own child-nature whenever she was with her parents, and
had withered her mother's character. Secretly, passionately, she often
made the past an excuse. Excuse for what? For the lack of delicacy and
loyalty, of the best sort of breeding, which had marked the days of her
engagement?

Never--_never_ to speak of it with him!--to pour out everything--to ask
him to judge, to understand, to forgive!--

She pulled herself together by a strong effort, reminding herself in a
flash of all that divided them:--of womanly pride--of Betty Macdonald's
presence at the Court--of that vain confidence to Hallin, of which her
inmost being must have been ashamed, but that something calming and
sacred stole upon her whenever she thought of Hallin, lifting everything
concerned with him into a category of its own.

No; let her selfish weakness make no fettering claim upon the man before
her. Let her be content with the friendship she had, after all,
achieved, that was now doing its kindly best for her.

All these images, like a tumultuous procession, ran through the mind in
a moment. He thought, as she sat there with her bent head, the hands
clasped round the knee in the way he knew so well, that she was full of
her mother, and found it difficult to put what she felt into words.

"But tell me about your plan," he said gently, "if you will."

"Oh! it is nothing,"