notwithstanding, the very last thing in the world, as he soon
discovered, that he really desired. During six months he had taken it
for granted; so had the county. He, of all men, could not afford to be
made ridiculous, apart from the solid, the extraordinary advantages of
the matter. He thought Marcella a foolish, unreasonable girl, and was
not the less in a panic because his wife let him understand that he had
had a good deal to do with it. So that between him and his daughter
there were now constant sparrings--sparrings which degraded Marcella in
her own eyes, and contributed not a little to make her keep away from
home.

The one place where she breathed freely, where the soul had full course,
was in Minta Hurd's kitchen. Side by side with that piteous plaintive
misery, her own fierceness dwindled. She would sit with little Willie on
her knees in the dusk of the spring evenings, looking into the fire, and
crying silently. She never suspected that her presence was often a
burden and constraint, not only to the sulky sister-in-law but to the
wife herself. While Miss Boyce was there the village kept away; and Mrs.
Hurd was sometimes athirst, without knowing it, for homelier speech and
simpler consolations than any Marcella could give her.

The last week arrived. Wharton's letters grew more uncertain and
despondent; the Radical press fought on with added heat as the cause
became more desperate. On Monday the wife went to see the condemned man,
who told her not to be so silly as to imagine there was any hope.
Tuesday night, Wharton asked his last question in Parliament. Friday was
the day fixed for the execution.

The question in Parliament came on late. The Home Secretary's answer,
though not final in form, was final in substance. Wharton went out
immediately and wrote to Marcella. "She will not sleep if I telegraph
to-night," he thought, with that instinct for detail, especially for
physical detail, which had in it something of the woman. But, knowing
that his letter could not reach her by the early post with the stroke of
eight next morning, he sent out his telegram, that she might not learn
the news first from the papers.

Marcella had wandered out before breakfast, feeling the house an
oppression, and knowing that, one way or another, the last news might
reach her any hour.

She had just passed through the little wood behind and alongside of the
house, and was in a field beyond, when she heard some one running