The plaintive tone—­as of a creature that has not even breath and strength left wherewith to chide the fate that crushes it—­broke Marcella’s heart.  Sitting beside the dead son, she wrapt the mother in her arms, and the only words that even her wild spirit could find wherewith to sustain this woman through the moments of her husband’s death were words of prayer—­the old shuddering cries wherewith the human soul from the beginning has thrown itself on that awful encompassing Life whence it issued, and whither it returns.

CHAPTER XV.

Two days later, in the afternoon, Aldous Raeburn found himself at the door of Mellor.  When he entered the drawing-room, Mrs. Boyce, who had heard his ring, was hurrying away.

“Don’t go,” he said, detaining her with a certain peremptoriness.  “I want all the light on this I can get.  Tell me, she has actually brought herself to regard this man’s death as in some sort my doing—­as something which ought to separate us?”

Mrs. Boyce saw that he held an opened letter from Marcella crushed in his hand.  But she did not need the explanation.  She had been expecting him at any hour throughout the day, and in just this condition of mind.

“Marcella must explain for herself,” she said, after a moment’s thought.  “I have no right whatever to speak for her.  Besides, frankly, I do not understand her, and when I argue with her she only makes me realise that I have no part or lot in her—­that I never had.  It is just enough.  She was brought up away from me.  And I have no natural hold.  I cannot help you, or any one else, with her.”

Aldous had been very tolerant and compassionate in the past of this strange mother’s abdication of her maternal place, and of its probable causes.  But it was not in human nature that he should be either to-day.  He resumed his questioning, not without sharpness.

“One word, please.  Tell me something of what has happened since Thursday, before I see her.  I have written—­but till this morning I have had not one line from her.”

They were standing by the window, he with his frowning gaze, in which agitation struggled against all his normal habits of manner and expression, fixed upon the lawn and the avenue.  She told him briefly what she knew of Marcella’s doings since the arrival of Wharton’s telegram—­of the night in the cottage, and the child’s death.  It was plain that he listened with a shuddering repulsion.

“Do you know,” he exclaimed, turning upon her, “that she may never recover this?  Such a strain, such a horror! rushed upon so wantonly, so needlessly.”

“I understand.  You think that I have been to blame?  I do not wonder.  But it is not true—­not in this particular case.  And anyway your view is not mine.  Life—­and the iron of it—­has to be faced, even by women—­perhaps, most of all, by women.  But let me go now.  Otherwise my husband will come in.  And I imagine you would rather see Marcella before you see him or any one.”