ous started. Mrs. Boyce reddened with anger, and checking her
instinct to intervene began to put away her working materials that she
might leave them together. While she was still busy Aldous said:

"You forget; no magistrate ever tries a case in which he is personally
concerned. I shall take no part in the trial. My grandfather, of course,
must prosecute."

"But it will be a bench of landlords," cried Marcella; "of men with whom
a poacher is already condemned."

"You are unjust to us, I think," said Aldous, slowly, after a pause,
during which Mrs. Boyce left the room--"to some of us, at any rate.
Besides, as of course you know, the case will be simply sent on for
trial at the assizes. By the way "--his tone changed--"I hear to-night
that Harry Wharton undertakes the defence."

"Yes," said Marcella, defiantly. "Is there anything to say against it?
You wouldn't wish Hurd not to be defended, I suppose?"

"Marcella!"

Even her bitter mood was pierced by the tone. She had never wounded him
so deeply yet, and for a moment he felt the situation intolerable; the
surging grievance and reproach, with which his heart was really full,
all but found vent in an outburst which would have wholly swept away his
ordinary measure and self-control. But then, as he looked at her, it
struck his lover's sense painfully how pale and miserable she was. He
could not scold! But it came home to him strongly that for her own sake
and his it would be better there should be explanations. After all
things had been going untowardly for many weeks. His nature moved slowly
and with much self-doubt, but it was plain to him now that he must make
a stand.

After his cry, her first instinct was to apologise. Then the words stuck
in her throat. To her, as to him, they seemed to be close on a trial of
strength. If she could not influence him in this matter--so obvious, as
it seemed to her, and so near to her heart--what was to become of that
lead of hers in their married life, on which she had been reckoning from
the beginning? All that was worst in her and all that was best rose to
the struggle.

But, as he did not speak, she looked up at last.

"I was waiting," he said in a low voice.

"What for?"

"Waiting till you should tell me you did not mean what you said."

She saw that he was painfully moved; she also saw that he was
introducing something into their relation, an element of proud
self-assertion, which she had never felt in it before. H