Yet all through she was preoccupied, and towards the end very anxious to get home, a state of mind which prevented her from noticing Marcella’s changed looks after her reappearance with Aldous in the ball-room, as closely as she otherwise might have done.  Yet the mother had observed that the end of Marcella’s progress had been somewhat different from the beginning; that the girl’s greetings had been gentler, her smiles softer; and that in particular she had taken some pains, some wistful pains, to make Hallin talk to her.  Lord Maxwell—­ignorant of the Wandle incident—­was charmed with her, and openly said so, both to the mother and Lady Winterbourne, in his hearty old man’s way.  Only Miss Raeburn held indignantly aloof, and would not pretend, even to Mrs. Boyce.

And now Marcella was tired—­dead tired, she said to herself, both in mind and body.  She lay back in the carriage, trying to sink herself in her own fatigue, to forget everything, to think of nothing.  Outside the night was mild, and the moon clear.  For some days past, after the break up of the long frost, there had been heavy rain.  Now the rain had cleared away, and in the air there was already an early promise of spring.  As she walked home from the village that afternoon she had felt the buds and the fields stirring.

When they got home, Mrs. Boyce turned to her daughter at the head of the stairs, “Shall I unlace your dress, Marcella?”

“Oh no, thank you.  Can I help you?”

“No.  Good-night.”

“Mamma!” Marcella turned and ran after her.  “I should like to know how papa is.  I will wait here if you will tell me.”

Mrs. Boyce looked surprised.  Then she went into her room and shut the door.  Marcella waited outside, leaning against the old oak gallery which ran round the hall, her candle the one spot of light and life in the great dark house.

“He seems to have slept well,” said Mrs. Boyce, reappearing, and speaking under her breath.  “He has not taken the opiate I left for him, so he cannot have been in pain.  Good-night.”

Marcella kissed her and went.  Somehow, in her depression of nerve and will, she was loth to go away by herself.  The loneliness of the night, and of her wing of the house, weighed upon her; the noises made by the old boards under her steps, the rustling draughts from the dark passages to right and left startled and troubled her; she found herself childishly fearing lest her candle should go out.

Yet, as she descended the two steps to the passage outside her door, she could have felt little practical need of it, for the moonlight was streaming in through its uncovered windows, not directly, but reflected from the Tudor front of the house which ran at right angles to this passage, and was to-night a shining silver palace, every battlement, window, and moulding in sharpest light and shade under the radiance of the night.  Beneath her feet, as she looked out