In reality Gairsley represented a corner of the estate which Aldous had specially made his own.  He had spent much labour and thought on the improvement of what had been a backward district, and in particular he had tried a small profit-sharing experiment upon a farm there which he had taken into his own hands for the purpose.  The experiment had met with fair success, and the labourer in question, who was one of the workers in it, had volunteered some approving remarks upon it at the meeting.

“Oh! it was very proper and respectful!” said Marcella, hastily.

The carriage rolled on some yards before Aldous replied.  Then he spoke in a drier tone than he had ever yet used to her.

“You do it injustice, I think.  The man is perfectly independent, and an honest fellow.  I was grateful to him for what he said.”

“Of course, I am no judge!” cried Marcella, quickly—­repentantly.  “Why did you ask me?  I saw everything crooked, I suppose—­it was your Primrose Dames—­they got upon my nerves.  Why did you have them?  I didn’t mean to vex and hurt you—­I didn’t indeed—­it was all the other way—­and now I have.”

She turned upon him laughing, but also half crying, as he could tell by the flutter of her breath.

He vowed he was not hurt, and once more changed both talk and tone.  They reached the drive’s end without a word of Wharton.  But Marcella went to bed hating herself, and Aldous, after his solitary drive home, sat up long and late, feverishly pacing and thinking.

* * * * *

Then next evening how differently things fell!

Marcella, having spent the afternoon at the Court, hearing all the final arrangements for the ball, and bearing with Miss Raeburn in a way which astonished herself, came home full of a sense of duty done, and announced to her mother that she was going to Mr. Wharton’s meeting in the Baptist chapel that evening.

“Unnecessary, don’t you think?” said Mrs. Boyce, lifting her eyebrows.  “However, if you go, I shall go with you.”

Most mothers, dealing with a girl of twenty-one, under the circumstances, would have said, “I had rather you stayed at home.”  Mrs. Boyce never employed locutions of this kind.  She recognised with perfect calmness that Marcella’s bringing up, and especially her independent years in London, had made it impossible.

Marcella fidgeted.

“I don’t know why you should, mamma.  Papa will be sure to want you.  Of course, I shall take Deacon.”

“Please order dinner a quarter of an hour earlier, and tell Deacon to bring down my walking things to the hall,” was all Mrs. Boyce said in answer.

Marcella walked upstairs with her head very stiff.  So her mother, and Miss Raeburn too, thought it necessary to keep watch on her.  How preposterous!  She thought of her free and easy relations with her Kensington student-friends, and wondered when a more reasonable idea of the relations between men and women would begin to penetrate English country society.