She kept her eyes closed, shaken with alternate shame and daring.

As for him, he was seized with overpowering dumbness and chill.  What was really in his mind was the Terrace—­was Wharton’s advancing figure.  But her state—­the moment—­coerced him.

“We could not be anything but friends,” he said gently, but with astonishing difficulty; and then could find nothing more to say.  She knew his reserve, however, and would not this time be repelled.

She put out her hand.

“No!” she said, looking at it and withdrawing it with a shudder; “oh no!”

Then suddenly a passion of tears and trembling overcame her.  She leant against the side of the cab, struggling in vain to regain her self-control, gasping incoherent things about the woman she had not been able to save.  He tried to soothe and calm her, his own heart wrung.  But she hardly heard him.

At last they turned into Maine Street, and she saw the gateway of Brown’s Buildings.

“Here we are,” she said faintly, summoning all her will; “do you know you will have to help me across that court, and upstairs—­then I shan’t be any more trouble.”

So, leaning on Raeburn’s arm, Marcella made her slow progress across the court of Brown’s Buildings and through the gaping groups of children.  Then at the top of her flight of steps she withdrew herself from him with a wan smile.

“Now I am home,” she said.  “Good-bye!”

Aldous looked round him well at Brown’s Buildings as he departed.  Then he got into a hansom, and drove to Lady Winterbourne’s house, and implored her to fetch and nurse Marcella Boyce, using her best cleverness to hide all motion of his in the matter.

After which he spent—­poor Aldous!—­one of the most restless and miserable nights of his life.

CHAPTER XI.

Marcella was sitting in a deep and comfortable chair at the open window of Lady Winterbourne’s drawing-room.  The house—­in James Street, Buckingham Gate—­looked out over the exercising ground of the great barracks in front, and commanded the greenery of St. James’s Park to the left.  The planes lining the barrack railings were poor, wilted things, and London was as hot as ever.  Still the charm of these open spaces of sky and park, after the high walls and innumerable windows of Brown’s Buildings, was very great; Marcella wanted nothing more but to lie still, to dally with a book, to dream as she pleased, and to be let alone.

Lady Winterbourne and her married daughter, Lady Ermyntrude, were still out, engaged in the innumerable nothings of the fashionable afternoon.  Marcella had her thoughts to herself.