as age goes, but already the refuse of their generation, and paid for at the rate of refuse; with no prospect but the workhouse, if the grave should be delayed, yet quiet, impassive, resigned, now showing a furtive childish amusement if a schoolboy misbehaved, or a dog strayed into church, now joining with a stolid unconsciousness in the tremendous sayings of the Psalms; women coarse, or worn, or hopeless; girls and boys and young children already blanched and emaciated beyond even the normal Londoner from the effects of insanitary cottages, bad water, and starvation food—­these figures and types had been a ghastly and quickening revelation to Marcella.  In London the agricultural labourer, of whom she had heard much, had been to her as a pawn in the game of discussion.  Here he was in the flesh; and she was called upon to live with him, and not only to talk about him.  Under circumstances of peculiar responsibility too.  For it was very clear that upon the owner of Mellor depended, and had always depended, the labourer of Mellor.

Well, she had tried to live with them ever since she came—­had gone in and out of their cottages in flat horror and amazement at them and their lives and their surroundings; alternately pleased and repelled by their cringing; now enjoying her position among them with the natural aristocratic instinct of women, now grinding her teeth over her father’s and uncle’s behaviour and the little good she saw any prospect of doing for her new subjects.

What, their friend and champion, and ultimately their redeemer too?  Well, and why not?  Weak women have done greater things in the world.  As she stood on the chancel step, vowing herself to these great things, she was conscious of a dramatic moment—­would not have been sorry, perhaps, if some admiring eye could have seen and understood her.

But there was a saving sincerity at the root of her, and her strained mood sank naturally into a girlish excitement.

“We shall see!—­We shall see!” she said aloud, and was startled to hear her words quite plainly in the silent church.  As she spoke she stooped to separate her flowers and see what quantities she had of each.

But while she did so a sound of distant voices made her raise herself again.  She walked down the church and stood at the open south door, looking and waiting.  Before her stretched a green field path leading across the park to the village.  The vicar and his sister were coming along it towards the church, both flower-laden, and beside walked a tall man in a brown shooting suit, with his gun in his hand and his dog beside him.

The excitement in Marcella’s eyes leapt up afresh for a moment as she saw the group, and then subsided into a luminous and steady glow.  She waited quietly for them, hardly responding to the affectionate signals of the vicar’s sister; but inwardly she was not quiet at all.  For the tall man in the brown shooting coat was Mr. Aldous Raeburn.