erson were wholly inadequate to her state
of mind.

"But if she feels it--as you or I might feel such a thing about some one
we knew or cared for, Agneta?"

"How can she feel it like that?" cried Miss Raeburn, exasperated. "How
can she know any one of--of that class well enough? It is not seemly, I
tell you, Adelaide, and I don't believe it is sincere. It's just done to
make herself conspicuous, and show her power over Aldous. For other
reasons too, if the truth were known!"

Miss Raeburn turned over the shirt she was making for some charitable
society and drew out some tacking threads with a loud noise which
relieved her. Lady Winterbourne's old and delicate cheek had flushed.

"I'm sure it's sincere," she said with emphasis. "Do you mean to say,
Agneta, that one can't sympathise, in such an awful thing, with people
of another class, as one would with one's own flesh and blood?"

Miss Raeburn winced. She felt for a moment the pressure of a democratic
world--a hated, formidable world--through her friend's question. Then
she stood to her guns.

"I dare say you'll think it sounds bad," she said stoutly; "but in my
young days it would have been thought a piece of posing--of
sentimentalism--something indecorous and unfitting--if a girl had put
herself in such a position. Marcella _ought_ to be absorbed in her
marriage; that is the natural thing. How Mrs. Boyce can allow her to mix
herself with such things as this murder--to _live_ in that cottage, as I
hear she has been doing, passes my comprehension."

"You mean," said Lady Winterbourne, dreamily, "that if one had been very
fond of one's maid, and she died, one wouldn't put on mourning for her.
Marcella would."

"I dare say," said Miss Raeburn, snappishly. "She is capable of anything
far-fetched and theatrical."

The door opened and Hallin came in. He had been suffering of late, and
much confined to the house. But the news of the murder had made a deep
and painful impression upon him, and he had been eagerly acquainting
himself with the facts. Miss Raeburn, whose kindness ran with unceasing
flow along the channels she allowed it, was greatly attached to him in
spite of his views, and she now threw herself upon him for sympathy in
the matter of the wedding. In any grievance that concerned Aldous she
counted upon him, and her shrewd eyes had plainly perceived that he had
made no great friendship with Marcella.

"I am very sorry for Aldous," he said at once; "but