opinion the case was going. Aldous Raeburn was a
person whom everybody respected; confidences were safe with him; and he
was himself deeply interested in the affair. The Raeburns being the
Raeburns, with all that that implied for smaller people in Brookshire,
little Mr. Burridge was aware of no reason whatever why Westall's
employers should not know that, although Mr. Wharton was working up the
defence with an energy and ability which set Burridge marvelling, it was
still his, Burridge's opinion, that everything that could be advanced
would be wholly unavailing with the jury; that the evidence, as it came
into final shape, looked worse for Hurd rather than better; and that the
only hope for the man lay in the after-movement for reprieve which can
always be got up in a game-preserving case.

"And is as a rule political and anti-landlord," thought Aldous, on one
of these mornings, as he rode along the edge of the down. He foresaw
exactly what would happen. As he envisaged the immediate future, he saw
one figure as the centre of it--not Marcella, but Wharton! Wharton was
defending, Wharton would organise the petition, Wharton would apply for
his own support and his grandfather's, through Marcella. To Wharton
would belong not only the popular _kudos_ of the matter, but much more,
and above all, Marcella's gratitude.

Aldous pulled up his horse an instant, recognising that spot in the
road, that downward stretching glade among the beeches, where he had
asked Marcella to be his wife. The pale February sunlight was spreading
from his left hand through the bare grey trunks, and over the distant
shoulders of the woods, far into the white and purple of the chalk
plain. Sounds of labour came from the distant fields; sounds of winter
birds from the branches round him. The place, the time, raised in him
all the intensest powers of consciousness. He saw himself as the man
_standing midway_ in everything--speculation, politics, sympathies--as
the perennially ineffective and, as it seemed to his morbid mood, the
perennially defeated type, beside the Whartons of this world. Wharton!
He knew him--had read him long ago--read him afresh of late. Raeburn's
lip showed the contempt, the bitterness which the philosopher could not
repress, showed also the humiliation of the lover. Here was he, banished
from Marcella; here was Wharton, in possession of her mind and
sympathies, busily forging a link--

"It shall be _broken!_" said Raeburn to hi