They had no sooner stepped from their carriage than Aldous, who was waiting in the outer hall, joyously discovered them.  Till then he had been walking aimlessly amid the crowd of his own guests, wondering when she would come, how she would like it.  This splendid function had been his grandfather’s idea; it would never have entered his own head for a moment.  Yet he understood his grandfather’s wish to present his heir’s promised bride in this public ceremonious way to the society of which she would some day be the natural leader.  He understood, too, that there was more in the wish than met the ear; that the occasion meant to Lord Maxwell, whether Dick Boyce were there or no, the final condoning of things past and done with, a final throwing of the Maxwell shield over the Boyce weakness, and full adoption of Marcella into her new family.

All this he understood and was grateful for.  But how would she respond?  How would she like it—­this parade that was to be made of her—­these people that must be introduced to her?  He was full of anxieties.

Yet in many ways his mind had been easier of late.  During the last week she had been very gentle and good to him—­even Miss Raeburn had been pleased with her.  There had been no quoting of Wharton when they met; and he had done his philosopher’s best to forget him.  He trusted her proudly, intensely; and in four weeks she would be his wife.

“Can you bear it?” he said to her in a laughing whisper as she and her mother emerged from the cloak-room.

“Tell me what to do,” she said, flushing.  “I will do my best.  What a crowd!  Must we stay very long?”

“Ah, my dear Mrs. Boyce,” cried Lord Maxwell, meeting them on the steps of the inner quadrangular corridor—­“Welcome indeed!  Let me take you in.  Marcella! with Aldous’s permission!” he stooped his white head gallantly and kissed her on the cheek—­“Remember I am an old man; if I choose to pay you compliments, you will have to put up with them!”

Then he offered Mrs. Boyce his arm, a stately figure in his ribbon and cross of the Bath.  A delicate red had risen to that lady’s thin cheek in spite of her self-possession.  “Poor thing,” said Lord Maxwell to himself as he led her along—­“poor thing!—­how distinguished and charming still!  One sees to-night what she was like as a girl.”

Aldous and Marcella followed.  They had to pass along the great corridor which ran round the quadrangle of the house.  The antique marbles which lined it were to-night masked in flowers, and seats covered in red had been fitted in wherever it was possible, and were now crowded with dancers “sitting out.”  From the ball-room ahead came waves of waltz-music; the ancient house was alive with colour and perfume, with the sounds of laughter and talk, lightly fretting, and breaking the swaying rhythms of the band.  Beyond the windows of the corridor, which had been left uncurtained because of the beauty of the night, the stiff Tudor garden with its fountains, which filled up the quadrangle, was gaily illuminated under a bright moon; and amid all the varied colour of lamps, drapery, dresses, faces, the antique heads ranged along the walls of the corridor—­here Marcus Aurelius, there Trajan, there Seneca—­and the marble sarcophagi which broke the line at intervals, stood in cold, whitish relief.