When Aldous came back, with a somewhat slow and hesitating step, he approached Marcella, who was standing silent by the window, and asked after the lame arm.  He was sorry, he said, to see that it was still in its sling.  His tone was a little abrupt.  Only Lady Winterbourne saw the quick nervousness of the eyes,

“Oh! thank you,” said Marcella, coldly, “I shall get back to work next week.”

She stooped and took up her book.

“I must please go and write some letters,” she said, in answer to Lady Winterbourne’s flurried look.

And she walked away.  Betty and Lady Ermyntrude also went to take off their things.

“Aldous!” said Lady Winterbourne, holding out her hand to him.

He took it, glanced unwillingly at her wistful, agitated face, pressed the hand, and let it go.

“Isn’t it sad,” said his old friend, unable to help herself, “to see her battling like this with life—­with thought—­all alone?  Isn’t it sad, Aldous?”

“Yes,” he said.  Then, after a pause, “Why doesn’t she go home?  My patience gives out when I think of Mrs. Boyce.”

“Oh! it isn’t Mrs. Boyce’s fault,” said Lady Winterbourne, hopelessly.  “And I don’t know why one should be sorry for her particularly—­why one should want her to change her life again.  She does it splendidly.  Only I never, never feel that she is a bit happy in it.”

It was Hallin’s cry over again.

He said nothing for a moment; then he forced a smile.

“Well! neither you nor I can help it, can we?” he said.  The grey eyes looked at her steadily—­bitterly.  Lady Winterbourne, with the sensation of one who, looking for softness, has lit on granite, changed the subject.

Meanwhile, Marcella upstairs was walking restlessly up and down.  She could hardly keep herself from rushing off—­back to Brown’s Buildings at once. He in the room while she was saying those things!  Lady Selina’s words burnt in her ears.  Her morbid, irritable sense was all one vibration of pride and revolt.  Apology—­appeal—­under the neatest comedy guise!  Of course!—­now that Lord-Maxwell was dying, and the ill-used suitor was so much the nearer to his earldom.  A foolish girl had repented her of her folly—­was anxious to make those concerned understand—­what more simple?

Her nerves were strained and out of gear.  Tears came in a proud, passionate gush; and she must needs allow herself the relief of them.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Lady Selina had gone home full of new and uncomfortable feelings.  She could not get Marcella Boyce out of her head—­neither as she had just seen her, under the wing of “that foolish woman, Madeleine Winterbourne,” nor as she had seen her first, on the terrace with Harry Wharton.  It did not please Lady Selina to feel herself in any way eclipsed or even rivalled by such an unimportant person as this strange and ridiculous girl.  Yet