“I’ll go in ter town termorrer,” she thought, “an’ have a crack wi’ Jimmy Gedge; ee needn’t be afeard for ‘is livin’.  An’ them great fules as ha’ bin runnin’ in a string arter ‘er, an’ cacklin’ about their eighteen-pence a score, as I’ve told ’em times, I’ll eat my apron the fust week as iver they get it.  I don’t hold wi’ ladies—­no, nor passons neither—­not when it comes to meddlin’ wi’ your wittles, an’ dictatin’ to yer about forgivin’ them as ha’ got the better ov yer.  That young lady there, what do she matter?  That sort’s allus gaddin’ about?  What’ll she keer about us when she’s got ‘er fine husband?  Here o’ Saturday, gone o’ Monday—­that’s what she is.  Now Jimmy Gedge, yer kin allus count on ‘im. Thirty-six year ee ha’ set there in that ’ere shop, and I guess ee’ll set there till they call ’im ter kingdom come.  Be’s a cheatin’, sweatin’, greedy old skinflint is Jimmy Gedge; but when yer wants ’im yer kin find ’im.”

* * * * *

Marcella hurried home, she was expecting a letter from Wharton, the third within a week.  She had not set eyes on him since they had met that first morning in the drive, and it was plain to her that he was as unwilling as she was that there should be any meeting between them.  Since the moment of his taking up the case, in spite of the pressure of innumerable engagements, he had found time to send her, almost daily, sheets covered with his small even writing, in which every detail and prospect of the legal situation, so far as it concerned James Hurd, were noted and criticised with a shrewdness and fulness which never wavered, and never lost for a moment the professional note.

“Dear Miss Boyce”—­the letters began—­leading up to a “Yours faithfully,” which Marcella read as carefully as the rest.  Often, as she turned them over, she asked herself whether that scene in the library had not been a mere delusion of the brain, whether the man whose wild words and act had burnt themselves into her life could possibly be writing her these letters, in this key, without a reference, without an allusion.  Every day, as she opened them, she looked them through quietly with a shaking pulse; every day she found herself proudly able to hand them on to her mother, with the satisfaction of one who has nothing to conceal, whatever the rest of the world may suspect.  He was certainly doing his best to replace their friendship on that level of high comradeship in ideas and causes which, as she told herself, it had once occupied.  His own wanton aggression and her weakness had toppled it down thence, and brought it to ruin.  She could never speak to him, never know him again till it was re-established.  Still his letters galled her.  He assumed, she supposed, that such a thing could happen, and nothing more be said about it?  How little he knew her, or what she had in her mind!