ly to talk about
him. Under circumstances of peculiar responsibility too. For it was very
clear that upon the owner of Mellor depended, and had always depended,
the labourer of Mellor.

Well, she had tried to live with them ever since she came--had gone in
and out of their cottages in flat horror and amazement at them and their
lives and their surroundings; alternately pleased and repelled by their
cringing; now enjoying her position among them with the natural
aristocratic instinct of women, now grinding her teeth over her father's
and uncle's behaviour and the little good she saw any prospect of doing
for her new subjects.

What, _their_ friend and champion, and ultimately their redeemer too?
Well, and why not? Weak women have done greater things in the world. As
she stood on the chancel step, vowing herself to these great things, she
was conscious of a dramatic moment--would not have been sorry,
perhaps, if some admiring eye could have seen and understood her.

But there was a saving sincerity at the root of her, and her strained
mood sank naturally into a girlish excitement.

"We shall see!--We shall see!" she said aloud, and was startled to hear
her words quite plainly in the silent church. As she spoke she stooped
to separate her flowers and see what quantities she had of each.

But while she did so a sound of distant voices made her raise herself
again. She walked down the church and stood at the open south door,
looking and waiting. Before her stretched a green field path leading
across the park to the village. The vicar and his sister were coming
along it towards the church, both flower-laden, and beside walked a tall
man in a brown shooting suit, with his gun in his hand and his dog
beside him.

The excitement in Marcella's eyes leapt up afresh for a moment as she
saw the group, and then subsided into a luminous and steady glow. She
waited quietly for them, hardly responding to the affectionate signals
of the vicar's sister; but inwardly she was not quiet at all. For the
tall man in the brown shooting coat was Mr. Aldous Raeburn.

CHAPTER IV.

"How kind of you!" said the rector's sister, enthusiastically; "but I
thought you would come and help us."

And as Marcella took some of her burdens from her, Miss Harden kissed
Marcella's cheek with a sort of timid eagerness. She had fallen in love
with Miss Boyce from the beginning, was now just advanced to this
privilege of kissing, and being entire