shamed of them."

"How absurd!" cried Marcella, "when I told you how I liked the school
children bobbing to me!"

They laughed, and then Aldous looked round with a start--"Ah, here is my
grandfather!"

Then he stood back, watching the look with which Lord Maxwell, after
greeting Lady Winterbourne, approached Miss Boyce. He saw the old man's
somewhat formal approach, the sudden kindle in the blue eyes which
marked the first effect of Marcella's form and presence, the bow, the
stately shake of the hand. The lover hearing his own heart beat,
realised that his beautiful lady had so far done well.

"You must let me say that I see a decided likeness in you to your
grandfather," said Lord Maxwell, when they were all seated at lunch,
Marcella on his left hand, opposite to Lady Winterbourne. "He was one of
my dearest friends."

"I'm afraid I don't know much about him," said Marcella, rather bluntly,
"except what I have got out of old letters. I never saw him that I
remember."

Lord Maxwell left the subject, of course, at once, but showed a great
wish to talk to her, and make her talk. He had pleasant things to say
about Mellor and its past, which could be said without offence; and some
conversation about the Boyce monuments in Mellor church led to a
discussion of the part played by the different local families in the
Civil Wars, in which it seemed to Aldous that his grandfather tried in
various shrewd and courteous ways to make Marcella feel at ease with
herself and her race, accepted, as it were, of right into the local
brotherhood, and so to soothe and heal those bruised feelings he could
not but divine.

The girl carried herself a little loftily, answering with an
independence and freedom beyond her age and born of her London life. She
was not in the least abashed or shy. Yet it was clear that Lord
Maxwell's first impressions were favourable. Aldous caught every now and
then his quick, judging look sweeping over her and instantly
withdrawn--comparing, as the grandson very well knew, every point, and
tone, and gesture with some inner ideal of what a Raeburn's wife should
be. How dream-like the whole scene was to Aldous, yet how exquisitely
real! The room, with its carved and gilt cedar-wood panels, its
Vandykes, its tall windows opening on the park, the autumn sun flooding
the gold and purple fruit on the table, and sparkling on the glass and
silver, the figures of his aunt and Lady Winterbourne, the moving
servants,