ay it relieved her to be angry and sore with him--to have a grievance
she could avow, and on which she made it a merit to dwell. His gentle,
yet firm difference of opinion with her on the subject struck her as
something new in him. It gave her a kind of fierce pleasure to fight it.
He seemed somehow to be providing her with excuses--to be coming down to
her level--to be equalling wrong with wrong.

The door handle turned. At last! She sprang up. But it was only William
coming in with the evening post. Mrs. Boyce followed him. She took a
quiet look at her daughter, and asked if her headache was better, and
then sat down near her to some needlework. During these two days she
had been unusually kind to Marcella. She had none of the little feminine
arts of consolation. She was incapable of fussing, and she never
caressed. But from the moment that Marcella had come home from the
village that morning, a pale, hollow-eyed wreck, the mother had asserted
her authority. She would not hear of the girl's crossing the threshold
again; she had put her on the sofa and dosed her with sal-volatile. And
Marcella was too exhausted to rebel. She had only stipulated that a note
should be sent to Aldous, asking him to come on to Mellor with the news
as soon as the verdict of the coroner's jury should be given. The jury
had been sitting all day, and the verdict was expected in the evening.

Marcella turned over her letters till she came to one from a London firm
which contained a number of cloth patterns. As she touched it she threw
it aside with a sudden gesture of impatience, and sat upright.

"Mamma! I have something to say to you."

"Yes, my dear."

"Mamma, the wedding must be put off!--it _must_!--for some weeks. I have
been thinking about it while I have been lying here. How _can_ I?--you
can see for yourself. That miserable woman depends on me altogether. How
can I spend my time on clothing and dressmakers? I feel as if I could
think of nothing else--nothing else in the world--but her and her
children." She spoke with difficulty, her voice high and strained. "The
assizes may be held that very week--who knows?--the very day we are
married."

She stopped, looking at her mother almost threateningly. Mrs. Boyce
showed no sign of surprise. She put her work down.

"I had imagined you might say something of the kind," she said after a
pause. "I don't know that, from your point of view, it is unreasonable.
But, of course, you must under