“What do you suppose he is after?” said Wharton, still gazing, his hands in his pockets.

“I don’t know; he wouldn’t poach on our land; I’m sure he wouldn’t!  Besides, there is nothing to poach.”—­Wharton smiled.—­“He must be going, after all, to Lord Maxwell’s coverts!  They are just beyond the avenue, on the side of the hill.  Oh! it is too disappointing!  Can we do anything?”

She looked at her companion with troubled eyes.  This incursion of something sadly and humanly real seemed suddenly to have made it natural to be standing beside him there at that strange hour.  Her conscience was soothed.

Wharton shook his head.

“I don’t see what we could do.  How strong the instinct is!  I told you that woman had a secret.  Well, it is only one form—­the squalid peasant’s form—­of the same instinct which sends the young fellows of our class ruffling it and chancing it all over the world.  It is the instinct to take one’s fling, to get out of the rut, to claim one’s innings against the powers that be—­Nature, or the law, or convention.”

“I know all that—­I never blame them!”—­cried Marcella—­“but just now it is so monstrous—­so dangerous!  Westall specially alert—­and this gang about!  Besides, I got him work from Lord Maxwell, and made him promise me—­for the wife and children’s sake.”

Wharton shrugged his shoulders.

“I should think Westall is right, and that the gang have got hold of him.  It is what always happens.  The local man is the catspaw.—­So you are sorry for him—­this man?” he said in another tone, facing round upon her.

She looked astonished, and drew herself up nervously, turning at the same time to leave the room.  But before she could reply he hurried on: 

“He—­may escape his risk.  Give your pity, Miss Boyce, rather to one—­who has not escaped!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, unconsciously laying a hand on one of the old chairs beside her to steady herself.  “But it is too late to talk.  Good-night, Mr. Wharton.”

“Good-bye,” he said quietly, yet with a low emphasis, at the same time moving out of her path.  She stopped, hesitating.  Beneath the lace and faded flowers on her breast he could see how her heart beat.

“Not good-bye?  You are coming back after the meeting?”

“I think not.  I must not inflict myself—­on Mrs. Boyce—­any more.  You will all be very busy during the next three weeks.  It would be an intrusion if I were to come back at such a time—­especially—­considering the fact”—­he spoke slowly—­“that I am as distasteful as I now know myself to be, to your future husband.  Since you all left to-night the house has been very quiet.  I sat over the fire thinking.  It grew clear to me.  I must go, and go at once.  Besides—­a lonely man as I am must not risk his nerve.  His task is set him, and there are none to stand by him if he fails.”

She trembled all over.  Weariness and excitement made normal self-control almost impossible.