He, like Marcella, did not believe that Richard Boyce’s offences were of the quite unpardonable order; although, owing to a certain absent and preoccupied temper, he had never yet taken the trouble to enquire into them in detail.  As to any real restoration of cordiality between the owner of Mellor and his father’s old friends and connections, that of course was not to be looked for; but there should be decent social recognition, and—­in the case of Mrs. Boyce and her daughter—­there should be homage and warm welcome, simply because she wished it, and it was absurd she should not have it!  Raeburn, whose mind was ordinarily destitute of the most elementary capacity for social intrigue, began to plot in detail how it should be done.  He relied first upon winning his grandfather—­his popular distinguished grandfather, whose lightest word had weight in Brookshire.  And then, he himself had two or three women friends in the county—­not more, for women had not occupied much place in his thoughts till now.  But they were good friends, and, from the social point of view, important.  He would set them to work at once.  These things should be chiefly managed by women.

But no patronage!  She would never bear that, the glancing proud creature.  She must guess, indeed, let him tread as delicately as he might, that he and others were at work for her.  But oh! she should be softly handled; as far as he could achieve it, she should, in a very little while, live and breathe compassed with warm airs of good-will and consideration.

He felt himself happy, amazingly happy, that at the very beginning of his love, it should thus be open to him, in these trivial, foolish ways, to please and befriend her.  Her social dilemma and discomfort one moment, indeed, made him sore for her; the next, they were a kind of joy, since it was they gave him this opportunity to put out a strong right arm.

Everything about her at this moment was divine and lovely to him; all the qualities of her rich uneven youth which she had shown in their short intercourse—­her rashness, her impulsiveness, her generosity.  Let her but trust herself to him, and she should try her social experiments as she pleased—­she should plan Utopias, and he would be her hodman to build them.  The man perplexed with too much thinking remembered the girl’s innocent, ignorant readiness to stamp the world’s stuff anew after the forms of her own pitying thought, with a positive thirst of sympathy.  The deep poetry and ideality at the root of him under all the weight of intellectual and critical debate leapt towards her.  He thought of the rapid talk she had poured out upon him, after their compact of friendship, in their walk back to the church, of her enthusiasm for her Socialist friends and their ideals,—­with a momentary madness of self-suppression and tender humility.  In reality, a man like Aldous Raeburn is born to be the judge and touchstone of natures like Marcella Boyce.  But the illusion of passion may deal as disturbingly with moral rank as with social.