dy father. It's surprising; you'd have thought a man
like Aldous Raeburn would have looked for the pick of things."

"Perhaps it was she looked for the pick of things!" said the other, with
a blunt laugh. "Waiter, another bottle of champagne."

CHAPTER XI.

Marcella was lying on the sofa in the Mellor drawing-room. The February
evening had just been shut out, but she had told William not to bring
the lamps till they were rung for. Even the fire-light seemed more than
she could bear. She was utterly exhausted both in body and mind; yet, as
she lay there with shut eyes, and hands clasped under her cheek, a start
went through her at every sound in the house, which showed that she was
not resting, but listening. She had spent the morning in the Hurds'
cottage, sitting by Mrs. Hurd and nursing the little boy. Minta Hurd,
always delicate and consumptive, was now generally too ill from shock
and misery to be anywhere but in her bed, and Willie was growing
steadily weaker, though the child's spirit was such that he would insist
on dressing, on hearing and knowing everything about his father, and on
moving about the house as usual. Yet every movement of his wasted bones
cost him the effort of a hero, and the dumb signs in him of longing for
his father increased the general impression as of some patient creature
driven by Nature to monstrous and disproportionate extremity.

The plight of this handful of human beings worked in Marcella like some
fevering torture. She was wholly out of gear physically and morally.
Another practically sleepless night, peopled with images of horror, had
decreased her stock of sane self-control, already lessened by long
conflict of feeling and the pressure of self-contempt. Now, as she lay
listening for Aldous Raeburn's ring and step, she hardly knew whether to
be angry with him for coming so late, or miserable that he should come
at all. That there was a long score to settle between herself and him
she knew well. Shame for an experience which seemed to her maiden sense
indelible--both a weakness and a treachery--lay like a dull weight on
heart and conscience. But she would not realise it, she would not act
upon it. She shook the moral debate from her impatiently. Aldous should
have his due all in good time--should have ample opportunity of deciding
whether he would, after all, marry such a girl as she. Meanwhile his
attitude with regard to the murder exasperated her. Yet, in some strange
w