“Oh! but the monkey has so much heart,” said Aldous, laughing again, as every one was apt to laugh who talked about Betty Macdonald, “and it makes friends with every sick and sorry creature it comes across, especially with old maids!  It amounts to genius, Betty’s way with old maids.  You should see her in the middle of them in the hotel salon at night—­a perfect ring of them—­and the men outside, totally neglected, and out of temper.  I have never seen Betty yet in a room with somebody she thought ill at ease, or put in the shade—­a governess, or a schoolgirl, or a lumpish boy—­that she did not devote herself to that somebody.  It is a pretty instinct; I have often wondered whether it is nature or art.”

He fell silent, still smiling.  Hallin watched him closely.  Perhaps the thought which had risen in his mind revealed itself by some subtle sign or other to Aldous.  For suddenly Raeburn’s expression changed; the over-strenuous, harassed look, which of late had somewhat taken the place of his old philosopher’s quiet, reappeared.

“I did not tell you, Hallin,” he began, in a low voice, raising his eyes to his friend, “that I had seen her again.”

Hallin paused a moment.  Then he said: 

“No.  I knew she went to the House to hear Wharton’s speech, and that she dined there.  I supposed she might just have come across you—­but she said nothing.”

“Of course, I had no idea,” said Aldous; “suddenly Lady Winterbourne and I came across her on the terrace.  Then I saw she was with that man’s party.  She spoke to me afterwards—­I believe now—­she meant to be kind”—­his voice showed the difficulty he had in speaking at all—­“but I saw him coming up to talk to her.  I am ashamed to think of my own manner, but I could not help myself.”

His face and eye took, as he spoke, a peculiar vividness and glow.  Raeburn had not for months mentioned to him the name of Marcella Boyce, but Hallin had all along held two faiths about the matter:  first, that Aldous was still possessed by a passion which had become part of his life; secondly, that the events of the preceding year had produced in him an exceedingly bitter sense of ill-usage, of a type which Hallin had not perhaps expected.

“Did you see anything to make you suppose,” he asked quietly, after a pause, “that she is going to marry him?”

“No—­no,” Aldous repeated slowly; “but she is clearly on friendly, perhaps intimate, terms with him.  And just now, of course, she is more likely to be influenced by him than ever.  He made a great success—­of a kind—­in the House a fortnight ago.  People seem to think he may come rapidly to the front.”

“So I understand.  I don’t believe it.  The jealousies that divide that group are too unmanageable.  If he were a Parnell!  But he lacks just the qualities that matter—­the reticence, the power of holding himself aloof from irrelevant things and interests, the hard self-concentration.”