“Reformed!—­fiddlesticks!” said Mr. Boyce, angrily.  “I never saw a girl with a head so full of nonsense in my life.  Where does she get it from?  Why did you let her go about in London with those people?  She may be spoilt for good.  Ten to one she’ll make a laughing stock of herself and everybody belonging to her, before she’s done.”

“Well, that is Mr. Raeburn’s affair.  I think I should take him into account more than Marcella does, if I were she.  But probably she knows best.”

“Of course she does.  He has lost his head; any one can see that.  While she is in the room, he is like a man possessed.  It doesn’t sit well on that kind of fellow.  It makes him ridiculous.  I told him half the settlement would be ample.  She would only spend the rest on nonsense.”

“You told him that?”

“Yes, I did.  Oh!”—­with an angry look at her—­“I suppose you thought I should want to sponge upon her?  I am as much obliged to you as usual!”

A red spot rose in his wife’s thin cheek.  But she turned and answered him gently, so gently that he had the rare sensation of having triumphed over her.  He allowed himself to be mollified, and she stood there over the fire, chatting with him for some time, a friendly natural note in her voice which was rare and, insensibly, soothed him like an opiate.  She chatted about Marcella’s trousseau gowns, detailing her own contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the latest gossip of the election, and so on.  He sat shading his eyes from the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two.  The inmost soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread—­the dread of dying.  The woman beside him held him in the hollow of her hand.  In the long wrestle between her nature and his, she had conquered.  His fear of her and his need of her had even come to supply the place of a dozen ethical instincts he was naturally without.

Some discomfort, probably physical, seemed at last to break up his moment of rest.

“Well, I tell you, I often wish it were the other man,” he said, with some impatience.  “Raeburn ’s so d——­d superior.  I suppose I offended him by what I said of Marcella’s whims, and the risk of letting her control so much money at her age, and with her ideas.  You never saw such an air!—­all very quiet, of course.  He buttoned his coat and got up to go, as though I were no more worth considering than the table.  Neither he nor his precious grandfather need alarm themselves:  I shan’t trouble them as a visitor.  If I shock them, they bore me—­so we’re quits.  Marcella’ll have to come here if she wants to see her father.  But owing to your charming system of keeping her away from us all her childhood, she’s not likely to want.”

“You mean Mr. Wharton by the other man?” said Mrs. Boyce, not defending herself or Aldous.