do it for?" he
asked himself; "what am I going to do it for again to-morrow?"

Ten o'clock. Mr. Boyce was gone to bed. No more entertaining of _him_ to
be done; one might be thankful for that mercy. Miss Boyce and her mother
would, he supposed, be down directly. They had gone up to dress at nine.
It was the night of the Maxwell Court ball, and the carriage had been
ordered for half-past ten. In a few minutes he would see Miss Boyce in
her new dress, wearing Raeburn's pearls. He was extraordinarily
observant, and a number of little incidents and domestic arrangements
bearing on the feminine side of Marcella's life had been apparent to
him from the beginning. He knew, for instance, that the trousseau was
being made at home, and that during the last few weeks the lady for whom
it was destined had shown an indifference to the progress of it which
seemed to excite a dumb annoyance in her mother. Curious woman, Mrs.
Boyce!

He found himself listening to every opening door, and already, as it
were, gazing at Marcella in her white array. He was not asked to this
ball. As he had early explained to Miss Boyce, he and Miss Raeburn had
been "cuts" for years, for what reason he had of course left Marcella to
guess. As if Marcella found any difficulty in guessing--as if the
preposterous bigotries and intolerances of the Ladies' League were not
enough to account for any similar behaviour on the part of any similar
high-bred spinster! As for this occasion, she was far too proud both on
her own behalf and Wharton's to say anything either to Lord Maxwell or
his sister on the subject of an invitation for her father's guest.

It so happened, however, that Wharton was aware of certain other reasons
for his social exclusion from Maxwell Court. There was no necessity, of
course, for enlightening Miss Boyce on the point. But as he sat waiting
for her, Wharton's mind went back to the past connected with those
reasons. In that past Raeburn had had the whip-hand of him; Raeburn had
been the moral superior dictating indignant terms to a young fellow
detected in flagrant misconduct. Wharton did not know that he bore him
any particular grudge. But he had never liked Aldous, as a boy, that he
could remember; naturally he had liked him less since that old affair.
The remembrance of it had made his position at Mellor particularly sweet
to him from the beginning; he was not sure that it had not determined
his original acceptance of the offer made to h