Mrs. Boyce, almost as white, Marcella now saw, as her husband, moved forward from the fire, where she had been speaking to Hallin, took a cushion from a chair near, exactly similar to the one he missed, and changed his position a little.

“It is just the feather’s weight of change that makes the difference, isn’t it?” said Wharton, softly, sitting down beside the invalid.

Mr. Boyce turned a mollified countenance upon the speaker, and being now free from pain, gave himself up to the amusement of hearing his guest talk.  Wharton devoted himself, employing all his best arts.

“Dr. Clarke is not anxious about him,” Mrs. Boyce said in a low voice to Marcella as they moved away.  “He does not think the attack will return for a long while, and he has given me the means of stopping it if it does come back.”

“How tired you look!” said Aldous, coming up to them, and speaking in the same undertone.  “Will you not let Marcella take you to rest?”

He was always deeply, unreasonably touched by any sign of stoicism, of defied suffering in women.  Mrs. Boyce had proved it many times already.  On the present occasion she put his sympathy by, but she lingered to talk with him.  Hallin from a distance noticed first of all her tall thinness and fairness, and her wonderful dignity of carriage; then the cordiality of her manner to her future son-in-law.  Marcella stood by listening, her young shoulders somewhat stiffly set.  Her consciousness of her mother’s respect and admiration for the man she was to marry was, oddly enough, never altogether pleasant to her.  It brought with it a certain discomfort, a certain wish to argue things out.

Hallin and Aldous parted with Frank Leven at Mellor gate, and turned homeward together under a starry heaven already whitening to the coming moon.

“Do you know that man Wharton is getting an extraordinary hold upon the London working men?” said Hallin.  “I have heard him tell that story of the game-preserving before.  He was speaking for one of the Radical candidates at Hackney, and I happened to be there.  It brought down the house.  The role of your Socialist aristocrat, of your land-nationalising landlord, is a very telling one.”

“And comparatively easy,” said Aldous, “when you know that neither Socialism nor land-nationalisation will come in your time!”

“Oh! so you think him altogether a windbag?”

Aldous hesitated and laughed.

“I have certainly no reason to suspect him of principles.  His conscience as a boy was of pretty elastic stuff.”

“You may be unfair to him,” said Hallin, quickly.  Then, after a pause:  “How long is he staying at Mellor?”

“About a week, I believe,” said Aldous, shortly.  “Mr. Boyce has taken a fancy to him.”

They walked on in silence, and then Aldous turned to his friend in distress.

“You know, Hallin, this wind is much too cold for you.  You are the most wilful of men.  Why would you walk?”