“Yes, of course.  But he came on the scene just too late, worse luck!  Why wouldn’t he have done just as well?  He’s as mad as she—­madder.  He believes all the rubbish she does—­talks such rot, the people tell me, in his meetings.  But then he’s good company—­he amuses you—­you don’t need to be on your p’s and q’s with him.  Why wouldn’t she have taken up with him?  As far as money goes they could have rubbed along. He’s not the man to starve when there are game-pies going.  It’s just bad luck.”

Mrs. Boyce smiled a little.

“What there is to make you suppose that she would have inclined to him, I don’t exactly see.  She has been taken up with Mr. Raeburn, really, from the first week of her arrival here.”

“Well, I dare say—­there was no one else,” said her husband, testily.  “That’s natural enough.  It’s just what I say.  All I know is, Wharton shall be free to use this house just as he pleases during his canvassing, whatever the Raeburns may say.”

He bent forward and poked the somewhat sluggish fire with a violence which hindered rather than helped it.  Mrs. Boyce’s smile had quite vanished.  She perfectly understood all that was implied, whether in his instinctive dislike of Aldous Raeburn, or in his cordiality towards young Wharton.

After a minute’s silence, he got up again and left the room, walking, as she observed, with difficulty.  She stopped a minute or so in the same place after he had gone, turning her rings absently on her thin fingers.  She was thinking of some remarks which Dr. Clarke, the excellent and experienced local doctor, had made to her on the occasion of his last visit.  With all the force of her strong will she had set herself to disbelieve them.  But they had had subtle effects already.  Finally she too went upstairs, bidding Marcella, whom she met coming down, hurry William with the tea, as Mr. Wharton might arrive any moment.

* * * * *

Marcella saw the room shut up—­the large, shabby, beautiful room—­the lamps brought in, fresh wood thrown on the fire to make it blaze, and the tea-table set out.  Then she sat herself down on a low chair by the fire, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her.  Her black dress revealed her fine full throat and her white wrists, for she had an impatience of restraint anywhere, and wore frills and falls of black lace where other people would have followed the fashion in high collars and close wristbands.  What must have struck any one with an observant eye, as she sat thus, thrown into beautiful light and shade by the blaze of the wood fire, was the massiveness of the head compared with the nervous delicacy of much of the face, the thinness of the wrist, and of the long and slender foot raised on the fender.  It was perhaps the great thickness and full wave of the hair which gave the head its breadth; but the effect was singular, and would have been heavy but for the glow of the eyes, which balanced it.