The boy’s eye brightened again with the implied permission to go on chattering.

“I know she has!  Betty’s brother as good as told me that she and Mrs. Macdonald—­that’s Betty’s mother—­she hasn’t got a father—­had talked it over.  And now Betty’s going with them to Italy, and Aldous is going too for ten days—­and when I go to the Macdonalds Mrs. Macdonald treats me as if I were a little chap in jackets, and Betty worries me to death.  It’s sickening!”

“And how about Mr. Raeburn?”

“Oh, Aldous seems to like her very much,” he said despondently.  “She’s always teasing and amusing him.  When she’s there she never lets him alone.  She harries him out.  She makes him read to her and ride with her.  She makes him discuss all sorts of things with her you’d never think Aldous would discuss—­her lovers and her love affairs, and being in love!—­it’s extraordinary the way she drives him round.  At Easter she and her mother were staying at the Court, and one night Betty told me she was bored to death.  It was a very smart party, but everything was so flat and everybody was so dull.  So she suddenly got up and ran across to Aldous.  ‘Now look here, Mr. Aldous,’ she said; ’this’ll never do! you’ve got to come and dance with me, and push those chairs and tables aside’—­I can fancy the little stamp she’d give—­’and make those other people dance too.’  And she made him—­she positively made him.  Aldous declared he didn’t dance, and she wouldn’t have a word of it.  And presently she got to all her tricks, skirt-dancing and the rest of it—­and of course the evening went like smoke.”

Marcella’s eyes, unusually wide open, were somewhat intently fixed on the speaker.

“And Mr. Raeburn liked it?” she asked in a tone that sounded incredulous.

“Didn’t he just?  She told me they got regular close friends after that, and he told her everything—­oh, well,” said the lad, embarrassed, and clutching at his usual formula—­“of course, I didn’t mean that.  And she’s fearfully flattered, you can see she is, and she tells me that she adores him—­that he’s the only great man she’s ever known—­that I’m not fit to black his boots, and ought to be grateful whenever he speaks to me—­and all that sort of rot.  And now she’s going off with them.  I shall have to shoot myself—­I declare I shall!”

“Well, not yet,” said Marcella, in a soothing voice; “the case isn’t clear enough.  Wait till they come back.  Shall we move?  I’m going over there to listen to that talk.  But—­first—­come and see me whenever you like—­3 to 4.30, Brown’s Buildings, Maine Street—­and tell me how this goes on?”

She spoke with a careless lightness, laughing at him with a half sisterly freedom.  She had risen from her seat, and he, whose thoughts had been wrapped up for months in one of the smallest of the sex, was suddenly struck with her height and stately gesture as she moved away from him.

“By Jove!  Why didn’t she stick to Aldous,” he said to himself discontentedly as his eyes followed her.  “It was only her cranks, and of course she’ll get rid of them.  Just like my luck!”