What she said, and the manner in which she said it, could only add to his uneasiness; but he assented, put a cushion behind her, wrapped the rugs round her, and then sat silent, train after train of close and anxious thought passing through his mind as they rolled along the dark roads.

When they arrived at Maxwell Court, the sound of the carriage brought Lord Maxwell and Miss Raeburn at once into the hall.

Aldous went forward in front of Marcella.  “I have brought Marcella,” he said hastily to his aunt.  “Will you take her upstairs to your sitting-room, and let her have some food and rest?  She is not fit for the exertion of dinner, but she wishes to speak to my grandfather afterwards.”

Lord Maxwell had already hurried to meet the black-veiled figure standing proudly in the dim light of the outer hall.

“My dear! my dear!” he said, drawing her arm within his, and patting her hand in fatherly fashion.  “How worn-out you look!—­Yes, certainly—­Agneta, take her up and let her rest—­And you wish to speak to me afterwards?  Of course, my dear, of course—­at any time.”

Miss Raeburn, controlling herself absolutely, partly because of Aldous’s manner, partly because of the servants, took her guest upstairs straightway, put her on the sofa in a cheerful sitting-room with a bright fire, and then, shrewdly guessing that she herself could not possibly be a congenial companion to the girl at such a moment, whatever might have happened or might be going to happen, she looked at her watch, said that she must go down to dinner, and promptly left her to the charge of a kind elderly maid, who was to do and get for her whatever she would.

Marcella made herself swallow some food and wine.  Then she said that she wished to be alone and rest for an hour, and would come downstairs at nine o’clock.  The maid, shocked by her pallor, was loth to leave her, but Marcella insisted.

When she was left alone she drew herself up to the fire and tried hard to get warm, as she had tried to eat.  When in this way a portion of physical ease and strength had come back to her, she took out the petition from its envelope and read it carefully.  As she did so her lip relaxed, her eye recovered something of its brightness.  All the points that had occurred to her confusedly, amateurishly, throughout the day, were here thrown into luminous and admirable form.  She had listened to them indeed, as urged by Wharton in his concluding speech to the jury, but it had not, alas! seemed so marvellous to her then, as it did now, that, after such a plea, the judge should have summed up as he did.

When she had finished it and had sat thinking awhile over the declining fire, an idea struck her.  She took a piece of paper from Miss Raeburn’s desk, and wrote on it: 

“Will you read this—­and Lord Maxwell—­before I come down?  I forgot that you had not seen it.—­M.”

A ring at the bell brought the maid.