When they were all gone Marcella threw herself into her chair a moment to think.  Her wrath with Anthony was soon dismissed.  But Louis’s thanks had filled her with delicious pleasure.  Her cheek, her eye had a child’s brightness.  The old passion for ruling and influencing was all alive and happy.

“I will see it is all right,” she was saying to herself.  “I will look after them.”

What she meant was, “I will see that Mr. Wharton looks after them!” and through the link of thought, memory flew quickly back to that tete-a-tete with him which had preceded the Cravens’ arrival.

How changed he was, yet how much the same!  He had not sat beside her for ten minutes before each was once more vividly, specially conscious of the other.  She felt in him the old life and daring, the old imperious claim to confidence, to intimacy—­on the other hand a new atmosphere, a new gravity, which suggested growing responsibilities, the difficulties of power, a great position—­everything fitted to touch such an imagination as Marcella’s, which, whatever its faults, was noble, both in quality and range.  The brow beneath the bright chestnut curls had gained lines that pleased her—­lines that a woman marks, because she thinks they mean experience an I mastery.

Altogether, to have met him again was pleasure; to think of him was pleasure; to look forward to hearing him speak in Parliament was pleasure; so too was his new connection with her old friends.  And a pleasure which took nothing from self-respect; which was open, honourable, eager.  As for that ugly folly of the past, she frowned at the thought of it, only to thrust the remembrance passionately away.  That he should remember or allude to it, would put an end to friendship.  Otherwise friends they would and should be; and the personal interest in his public career should lift her out of the cramping influences that flow from the perpetual commerce of poverty and suffering.  Why not?  Such equal friendships between men and women grow more possible every day.  While, as for Hallin’s distrust, and Anthony Craven’s jealous hostility, why should a third person be bound by either of them?  Could any one suppose that such a temperament as Wharton’s would be congenial to Hallin or to Craven—­or—­to yet another person, of whom she did not want to think?  Besides, who wished to make a hero of him?  It was the very complexity and puzzle of the character that made its force.

* * * * *

So with a reddened cheek, she lost herself a few minutes in this pleasant sense of a new wealth in life; and was only roused from the dreamy running to and fro of thought by the appearance of Minta, who came to clear away the tea.

“Why, it is close on the half-hour!” cried Marcella, springing up.  “Where are my things?”

She looked down the notes of her cases, satisfied herself that her bag contained all she wanted, and then hastily tied on her bonnet and cloak.