him, and, holding it to his lips, said in her ear every soothing
tender word that love's tutoring could bring to mind. In his emotion he
told himself and her that he admired and loved her the more for the
incident downstairs, for the temper she had shown! She alone among them
all had had the courage to strike the true stern Christian note. As to
the annoyance such courage might bring upon him and her in the
future--even as to the trouble it might cause his own dear folk--what
real matter? In these things she should lead.

What could love have asked better than such a moment? Yet Marcella's
weeping was in truth the weeping of despair. This man's very sweetness
to her, his very assumption of the right to comfort and approve her,
roused in her a desperate stifled sense of bonds that should never have
been made, and that now could not be broken. It was all plain to her at
last. His touch had no thrill for her; his frown no terror. She had
accepted him without loving him, coveting what he could give her. And
now it seemed to her that she cared nothing for anything he could
give!--that the life before her was to be one series of petty conflicts
between her and a surrounding circumstance which must inevitably in the
end be too strong for her, conflicts from which neither heart nor
ambition could gain anything. She had desired a great position for what
she might do with it. But could she do with it! She would be
subdued--oh! very quickly!--to great houses and great people, and all
the vapid pomp and idle toil of wealth. All that picture of herself,
stooping from place and power, to bind up the wounds of the people, in
which she had once delighted, was to her now a mere flimsy vulgarity.
She had been shown other ideals--other ways--and her pulses were still
swaying under the audacity--the virile inventive force of the showman.
Everything she had once desired looked flat to her; everything she was
not to have, glowed and shone. Poverty, adventure, passion, the joys of
self-realisation--these she gave up. She would become Lady Maxwell, make
friends with Miss Raeburn, and wear the family diamonds!

Then, in the midst of her rage with herself and fate, she drew herself
away, looked up, and caught full the eyes of Aldous Raeburn. Conscience
stung and burned. What was this life she had dared to trifle with--this
man she had dared to treat as a mere pawn in her own game? She gave way
utterly, appalled at her own misdoing, and behaved