“So it was from the dear mamma that the young man got his opinions?”

“Of course.  She dragged him into every absurdity she could from the time he was fifteen.  When the husband died she tried to get the servants to come in to meals, but the butler struck.  So did Wharton himself, who, for a Socialist, has always showed a very pretty turn for comfort.  I am bound to say he was cut up when she died.  It was the only time I ever felt like being civil to him—­in those months after she departed.  I suppose she was devoted to him—­which after all is something.”

“Good heavens!” said the other, still lazily turning over the pages of the newspaper as they sat waiting for their second course, “here is another poaching murder—­in Brookshire—­the third I have noticed within a month.  On Lord Maxwell’s property—­you know them?”

“I know the old man a little—­fine old fellow!  They’ll make him President of the Council, I suppose.  He can’t have much work left in him; but it is such a popular, respectable name.  Ah!  I’m sorry; the sort of thing to distress him terribly.”

“I see the grandson is standing.”

“Oh yes; will get in too.  A queer sort of man—­great ability and high character.  But you can’t imagine him getting on in politics, unless it’s by sheer weight of wealth and family influence.  He’ll find a scruple in every bush—­never stand the rough work of the House, or get on with the men.  My goodness! you have to pull with some queer customers nowadays.  By the way, I hear he is making an unsatisfactory marriage—­a girl very handsome, but with no manners, and like nobody else—­the daughter, too, of an extremely shady father.  It’s surprising; you’d have thought a man like Aldous Raeburn would have looked for the pick of things.”

“Perhaps it was she looked for the pick of things!” said the other, with a blunt laugh.  “Waiter, another bottle of champagne.”

CHAPTER XI.

Marcella was lying on the sofa in the Mellor drawing-room.  The February evening had just been shut out, but she had told William not to bring the lamps till they were rung for.  Even the fire-light seemed more than she could bear.  She was utterly exhausted both in body and mind; yet, as she lay there with shut eyes, and hands clasped under her cheek, a start went through her at every sound in the house, which showed that she was not resting, but listening.  She had spent the morning in the Hurds’ cottage, sitting by Mrs. Hurd and nursing the little boy.  Minta Hurd, always delicate and consumptive, was now generally too ill from shock and misery to be anywhere but in her bed, and Willie was growing steadily weaker, though the child’s spirit was such that he would insist on dressing, on hearing and knowing everything about his father, and on moving about the house as usual.  Yet every movement of his wasted bones cost him the effort of a hero, and the dumb signs in him of longing for his father increased the general impression as of some patient creature driven by Nature to monstrous and disproportionate extremity.