Wharton drew a breath of relief.  So the man was in custody, and there was other evidence.  Good!  There was no saying what a woman’s conscience might be capable of, even against her friends and herself.

When Mr. Boyce at last left him free to dress and make his preparations for the early train, by which the night before, after the ladies’ departure for the ball, he had suddenly made up his mind to leave Mellor, it was some time before Wharton could rouse himself to action.  The situation absorbed him.  Miss Boyce’s friend was now in imminent danger of his neck, and Miss Boyce’s thoughts must be of necessity concentrated upon his plight and that of his family.  He foresaw the passion, the saeva indignatio, that she must ultimately throw—­the general situation being what it was—­into the struggle for Hurd’s life.  Whatever the evidence might be, he would be to her either victim or champion—­and Westall, of course, merely the Holofernes of the piece.

How would Raeburn take it?  Ah, well! the situation must develop.  It occurred to him, however, that he would catch an earlier train to Widrington than the one he had fixed on, and have half an hour’s talk with a solicitor who was a good friend of his before going on to Birmingham.  Accordingly, he rang for William—­who came, all staring and dishevelled, fresh from the agitation of the servants’ hall—­gave orders for his luggage to be sent after him, got as much fresh information as he could from the excited lad, plunged into his bath, and finally emerged, fresh and vigorous in every nerve, showing no trace whatever of the fact that two hours of broken sleep had been his sole portion for a night, in which he had gone through emotions and sustained a travail of brain either of which would have left their mark on most men.

* * * * *

Then the meeting in the drive!  How plainly he saw them both—­Raeburn grave and pale, Marcella in her dark serge skirt and cap, with an eye all passion and a cheek white as her hand.

“A tragic splendour enwrapped her!—­a fierce heroic air.  She was the embodiment of the moment—­of the melancholy morning with its rain and leafless woods—­of the human anguish throbbing in the little village.  And I, who had seen her last in her festal dress, who had held her warm perfumed youth in my arms, who had watched in her white breast the heaving of the heart that I—­I had troubled!—­how did I find it possible to stand and face her?  But I did.  It rushed through me at once how I would make her forgive me—­how I would regain possession of her.  I had thought the play was closed:  it was suddenly plain to me that the second act was but just beginning.  She and Raeburn had already come to words—­I knew it directly I saw them.  This business will divide them more and more.  His conscience will come in—­and a Raeburn’s conscience is the devil!