concludes therefore that other people desire none.

"You _are_ better, papa?" said Marcella, taking his hand.

"Certainly, my dear--better for morphia. Don't talk of me. I have got my
death warrant, but I hope I can take it quietly. Evelyn, I _specially_
asked to have that thin cushion brought down from my dressing-room. It
is strange that no one pays any attention to my wants."

Mrs. Boyce, almost as white, Marcella now saw, as her husband, moved
forward from the fire, where she had been speaking to Hallin, took a
cushion from a chair near, exactly similar to the one he missed, and
changed his position a little.

"It is just the feather's weight of change that makes the difference,
isn't it?" said Wharton, softly, sitting down beside the invalid.

Mr. Boyce turned a mollified countenance upon the speaker, and being now
free from pain, gave himself up to the amusement of hearing his guest
talk. Wharton devoted himself, employing all his best arts.

"Dr. Clarke is not anxious about him," Mrs. Boyce said in a low voice to
Marcella as they moved away. "He does not think the attack will return
for a long while, and he has given me the means of stopping it if it
does come back."

"How tired you look!" said Aldous, coming up to them, and speaking in
the same undertone. "Will you not let Marcella take you to rest?"

He was always deeply, unreasonably touched by any sign of stoicism, of
defied suffering in women. Mrs. Boyce had proved it many times already.
On the present occasion she put his sympathy by, but she lingered to
talk with him. Hallin from a distance noticed first of all her tall
thinness and fairness, and her wonderful dignity of carriage; then the
cordiality of her manner to her future son-in-law. Marcella stood by
listening, her young shoulders somewhat stiffly set. Her consciousness
of her mother's respect and admiration for the man she was to marry was,
oddly enough, never altogether pleasant to her. It brought with it a
certain discomfort, a certain wish to argue things out.

Hallin and Aldous parted with Frank Leven at Mellor gate, and turned
homeward together under a starry heaven already whitening to the coming
moon.

"Do you know that man Wharton is getting an extraordinary hold upon the
London working men?" said Hallin. "I have heard him tell that story of
the game-preserving before. He was speaking for one of the Radical
candidates at Hackney, and I happened to be there. It brought down
the h