sensuous enjoyment. "How the year sweeps round in an instant! And all
the effect of a little heat and a little money. Will you allow me a
philosopher's remark?"

He drew back from her. His quick inquisitive but still respectful eye
took in every delightful detail.

"If I don't give you leave, my experience is that you will take it!" she
said, half laughing, half resentful, as though she had old aggressions
in mind.

"You admit the strength of the temptation? It is very simple, no one
could help making it. To be spectator of the _height_ of anything--the
best, the climax--makes any mortal's pulses run. Beauty, success,
happiness, for instance?"

He paused smiling. She leant a thin hand on the mantelpiece and looked
away; Aldous's pearls slipped backwards along her white arm.

"Do you suppose to-night will be the height of happiness?" she said at
last with a little scorn. "These functions don't present themselves to
_me_ in such a light."

Wharton could have laughed out--her pedantry was so young and
unconscious. But he restrained himself.

"I shall be with the majority to-night," he said demurely. "I may as
well warn you."

Her colour rose. No other man had ever dared to speak to her with this
assurance, this cool scrutinising air. She told herself to be indignant;
the next moment she _was_ indignant, but with herself for remembering
conventionalities.

"Tell me one thing," said Wharton, changing his tone wholly. "I know you
went down hurriedly to the village before dinner. Was anything wrong?"

"Old Patton is very ill," she said, sighing. "I went to ask after him;
he may die any moment. And the Hurds' boy too."

He leant against the mantelpiece, talking to her about both cases with a
quick incisive common-sense--not unkind, but without a touch of
unnecessary sentiment, still less of the superior person--which
represented one of the moods she liked best in him. In speaking of the
poor he always took the tone of comradeship, of a plain equality, and
the tone was, in fact, genuine.

"Do you know," he said presently, "I did not tell you before, but I am
certain that Hurd's wife is afraid of you, that she has a secret from
you?"

"From me! how could she? I know every detail of their affairs."

"No matter. I listened to what she said that day in the cottage when I
had the boy on my knee. I noticed her face, and I am quite certain. She
has a secret, and above all a secret from you."

Marcella looked disturb