at South Kensington, there seem to
have been two brothers, both artists, and both Socialists; ardent young
fellows, giving all their spare time to good works, who must have
influenced her a great deal. She is full of angers and revolts, which
you would delight in. And first of all, she is applying herself to her
father's wretched village, which will keep her hands full. A large and
passionate humanity plays about her. What she says often seems to me
foolish--in the ear; but the inner sense, the heart of it, command me.

"Stare as you please, Ned! Only write to me, and come down here as soon
as you can. I can and will hide nothing from you, so you will believe me
when I say that all is uncertain, that I know nothing, and, though I
hope everything, may just as well fear everything too. But somehow I am
another man, and the world shines and glows for me by day and night."

Aldous Raeburn rose from his chair and, going to the window, stood
looking out at the splendour of the autumn moon. Marcella moved across
the whiteness of the grass; her voice was still speaking to his inward
ear. His lips smiled; his heart was in a wild whirl of happiness.

Then he walked to the table, took up his letter, read it, tore it
across, and locked the fragments in a drawer.

"Not yet, Ned--not yet, dear old fellow, even to you," he said to
himself, as he put out his lamp.

CHAPTER VII.

Three days passed. On the fourth Marcella returned late in the afternoon
from a round of parish visits with Mary Harden. As she opened the oak
doors which shut off the central hall of Mellor from the outer
vestibule, she saw something white lying on the old cut and disused
billiard table, which still occupied the middle of the floor till
Richard Boyce, in the course of his economies and improvements, could
replace it by a new one.

She ran forward and took up a sheaf of cards, turning them over in a
smiling excitement. "Viscount Maxwell," "Mr. Raeburn," "Miss Raeburn,"
"Lady Winterbourne and the Misses Winterbourne," two cards of Lord
Winterbourne's--all perfectly in form.

Then a thought flashed upon her. "Of course it is his doing--and I asked
him!"

The cards dropped from her hand on the billiard table, and she stood
looking at them, her pride fighting with her pleasure. There was
something else in her feeling too--the exultation of proved power over a
person not, as she guessed, easily influenced, especially by women.

"Marcella, is tha