was just as much convinced as she was that Aldous was making a
great mistake, and that Marcella was not worthy of him. But the
engagement being there--a fact not apparently to be undone--both ladies
showed themselves disposed to take pains with it, to protect it against
aggression. Mrs. Boyce found herself becoming more of a _chaperon_ than
she had ever yet professed to be; and Miss Raeburn, as we have said,
made repeated efforts to capture Marcella and hold her for Aldous, her
lawful master.

But Marcella proved extremely difficult to manage. In the first place
she was a young person of many engagements. Her village scheme absorbed
a great deal of time. She was deep in a varied correspondence, in the
engagement of teachers, the provision of work-rooms, the collecting and
registering of workers, the organisation of local committees and so
forth. New sides of the girl's character, new capacities and
capabilities were coming out; new forms of her natural power over her
fellows were developing every day; she was beginning, under the
incessant stimulus of Wharton's talk, to read and think on social and
economic subjects, with some system and coherence, and it was evident
that she took a passionate mental pleasure in it all. And the more
pleasure these activities gave her, the less she had to spare for those
accompaniments of her engagement and her position that was to be, which
once, as Mrs. Boyce's sharp eyes perceived, had been quite normally
attractive to her.

"Why do you take up her time so, with all these things?" said Miss
Raeburn impatiently to Lady Winterbourne, who was now Marcella's
obedient helper in everything she chose to initiate. "She doesn't care
for anything she _ought_ to care about at this time, and Aldous sees
nothing of her. As for her trousseau, Mrs. Boyce declares she has had to
do it all. Marcella won't even go up to London to have her wedding-dress
fitted!"

Lady Winterbourne looked up bewildered.

"But I can't make her go and have her wedding-dress fitted, Agneta! And
I always feel you don't know what a fine creature she is. You don't
really appreciate her. It's splendid the ideas she has about this work,
and the way she throws herself into it."

"I dare say!" said Miss Raeburn, indignantly. "That's just what I object
to. Why can't she throw herself into being in love with Aldous! That's
her business, I imagine, just now--if she were a young woman like
anybody else one had ever seen--instea