e with the county
before she met it in the flesh. She knew that a great many of these men
who came and spoke to her were doing their best according to their
lights, that improvements were going on, that times were mending. But
there were abuses enough still, and the abuses were far more vividly
present to her than the improvements. In general, the people who
thronged these splendid rooms were to her merely the incompetent members
of a useless class. The nation would do away with them in time!
Meanwhile it might at least be asked of them that they should practise
their profession of landowning, such as it was, with greater conscience
and intelligence--that they should not shirk its opportunities or idle
them away. And she could point out those who did both--scandalously,
intolerably. Once or twice she thought passionately of Minta Hurd,
washing and mending all day, in her damp cottage; or of the Pattons in
"the parish house," thankful after sixty years of toil for a hovel where
the rain came through the thatch, and where the smoke choked you,
unless, with the thermometer below freezing-point, you opened the door
to the blast. Why should _these_ people have all the gay clothes, the
flowers, the jewels, the delicate food--all the delight and all the
leisure? And those, nothing! Her soul rose against what she saw as she
stood there, going through her part. Wharton's very words, every
inflection of his voice was in her ears, playing chorus to the scene.

But when these first introductions, these little empty talks of three or
four phrases apiece, and all of them alike, were nearly done with,
Marcella looked eagerly round for Mary Harden. There she was, sitting
quietly against the wall in a remote corner, her plain face all smiles,
her little feet dancing under the white muslin frock which she had
fashioned for herself with so much pain under Marcella's directions.
Miss Raeburn was called away to find an arm-chair for some dowager of
importance; Marcella took advantage of the break and of the end of a
dance to hurry down the room to Mary. Aldous, who was talking to old Sir
Charles Leven, Frank's father, a few steps off, nodded and smiled to her
as he saw her move.

"Have you been dancing, Mary?" she said severely.

"I wouldn't for worlds! I never was so much amused in my life. Look at
those girls--those sisters--in the huge velvet sleeves, like coloured
balloons!--and that old lady in the pink tulle and diamonds.--I do so