“Poor unhappy souls,” he said slowly, under his breath.  “You say that you have got some one to see after her.  She looks as though it might kill her, too.”

Marcella nodded.  Now that her task, for the moment, was nearly over, she could hardly restrain herself nervously or keep herself from crying.  Aldous observed her with disquiet as she put on her hat.  His heart was deeply stirred.  She had chosen more nobly for herself than he would have chosen for her, in thus daring an awful experience for the sake of mercy.  His moral sense, exalted and awed by the sight of death, approved, worshipped her.  His man’s impatience pined to get her away, to cherish and comfort hen Why, she could hardly have slept three hours since they parted on the steps of the Court, amidst the crowd of carriages!

Mrs. Mullins came in still scared and weeping, and dropping frightened curtseys to “Muster Raeburn.”  Marcella spoke to her a little in a whisper, gave some counsels which filled Aldous with admiration for the girl’s practical sense and thoughtfulness, and promised to come again later.  Mrs. Hurd neither moved nor opened her eyes.

“Can you walk?” said Aldous, bending over her, as they stood outside the cottage.  “I can see that you are worn out.  Could you sit my horse if I led him?”

“No, let us walk.”

They went on together, followed by the eyes of the village, the boy leading the horse some distance behind.

“Where have you been?” said Marcella, when they had passed the village.  “Oh, please don’t think of my being tired!  I had so much rather know it all.  I must know it all.”

She was deathly pale, but her black eyes flashed impatience and excitement.  She even drew her hand out of the arm where Aldous was tenderly holding it, and walked on erect by herself.

“I have been with poor Dynes,” said Aldous, sadly; “we had to take his deposition.  He died while I was there.”

“He died?”

“Yes.  The fiends who killed him had left small doubt of that.  But he lived long enough, thank God, to give the information which will, I think, bring them to justice!”

The tone of the magistrate and the magnate goaded Marcella’s quivering nerves.

“What is justice?” she cried; “the system that wastes human lives in protecting your tame pheasants?”

A cloud came over the stern clearness of his look.  He gave a bitter sigh—­the sigh of the man to whom his own position in life had been, as it were, one long scruple.

“You may well ask that!” he said.  “You cannot imagine that I did not ask it of myself a hundred times as I stood by that poor fellow’s bedside.”

They walked on in silence.  She was hardly appeased.  There was a deep, inner excitement in her urging her towards difference, towards attack.  At last he resumed: