Marcella had gone down into reality, and had found there the rebellion
and the storm for which such souls as hers are made. Rebellion most of
all. She had been living with the poor, in their stifling rooms, amid
their perpetual struggle for a little food and clothes and bodily ease;
she had seen this struggle, so hard in itself, combined with agonies of
soul and spirit, which made the physical destitution seem to the
spectator something brutally gratuitous, a piece of careless and
tyrannous cruelty on the part of Nature--or God? She would hardly let
herself think of Aldous--though she _must_ think of him by-and-by! He
and his fared sumptuously every hour! As for her, it was as though in
her woman's arms, on her woman's breast, she carried Lazarus all day,
stooping to him with a hungering pity. And Aldous stood aloof. Aldous
would not help her--or not with any help worth having--in consoling this
misery--binding up these sores. Her heart cried shame on him. She had a
crime against him to confess--but she felt herself his superior none the
less. If he cast her off--why then surely they would be quits, quits for
good and all.

As she reached the front door of Mellor, she saw a little two-wheeled
cart standing outside it, and William holding the pony.

Visitors were nowadays more common at Mellor than they had been, and
her instinct was to escape. But as she was turning to a side door
William touched his cap to her.

"Mr. Wharton's waiting to see you, miss."

She stopped sharply.

"Where is Mrs. Boyce, William?"

"In the drawing-room, miss."

She walked in calmly. Wharton was standing on the rug, talking; Mrs.
Boyce was listening to what he had to say with the light repellent air
Marcella knew so well.

When she came in Wharton stepped forward ceremoniously to shake hands,
then began to speak at once, with the manner of one who is on a business
errand and has no time to waste.

"I thought it best, Miss Boyce, as I had unexpectedly a couple of spare
hours this evening, to come and let you know how things were going. You
understand that the case comes on at the assizes next Thursday?"

Marcella assented. She had seated herself on the old sofa beside the
fire, her ungloved hands on her knee. Something in her aspect made
Wharton's eyes waver an instant as he looked down upon her--but it was
the only sign.

"I should like to warn you," he said gravely, "that I entertain no hope
whatever of getting James Hurd off. I