Ten o’clock.  Mr. Boyce was gone to bed.  No more entertaining of him to be done; one might be thankful for that mercy.  Miss Boyce and her mother would, he supposed, be down directly.  They had gone up to dress at nine.  It was the night of the Maxwell Court ball, and the carriage had been ordered for half-past ten.  In a few minutes he would see Miss Boyce in her new dress, wearing Raeburn’s pearls.  He was extraordinarily observant, and a number of little incidents and domestic arrangements bearing on the feminine side of Marcella’s life had been apparent to him from the beginning.  He knew, for instance, that the trousseau was being made at home, and that during the last few weeks the lady for whom it was destined had shown an indifference to the progress of it which seemed to excite a dumb annoyance in her mother.  Curious woman, Mrs. Boyce!

He found himself listening to every opening door, and already, as it were, gazing at Marcella in her white array.  He was not asked to this ball.  As he had early explained to Miss Boyce, he and Miss Raeburn had been “cuts” for years, for what reason he had of course left Marcella to guess.  As if Marcella found any difficulty in guessing—­as if the preposterous bigotries and intolerances of the Ladies’ League were not enough to account for any similar behaviour on the part of any similar high-bred spinster!  As for this occasion, she was far too proud both on her own behalf and Wharton’s to say anything either to Lord Maxwell or his sister on the subject of an invitation for her father’s guest.

It so happened, however, that Wharton was aware of certain other reasons for his social exclusion from Maxwell Court.  There was no necessity, of course, for enlightening Miss Boyce on the point.  But as he sat waiting for her, Wharton’s mind went back to the past connected with those reasons.  In that past Raeburn had had the whip-hand of him; Raeburn had been the moral superior dictating indignant terms to a young fellow detected in flagrant misconduct.  Wharton did not know that he bore him any particular grudge.  But he had never liked Aldous, as a boy, that he could remember; naturally he had liked him less since that old affair.  The remembrance of it had made his position at Mellor particularly sweet to him from the beginning; he was not sure that it had not determined his original acceptance of the offer made to him by the Liberal Committee to contest old Dodgson’s seat.  And during the past few weeks the exhilaration and interest of the general position—­considering all things—­had been very great.  Not only was he on the point of ousting the Maxwell candidate from a seat which he had held securely for years—­Wharton was perfectly well aware by now that he was trespassing on Aldous Raeburn’s preserves in ways far more important, and infinitely more irritating!  He and Raeburn had not met often at Mellor during these weeks of fight.  Each had been too busy.  But whenever they had come across each other Wharton had clearly perceived that his presence in the house, his growing intimacy with Marcella Boyce, the free-masonry of opinion between them, the interest she took in his contest, the village friendships they had in common, were all intensely galling to Aldous Raeburn.