Now for some days, however, she had received no letter from either brother or sister, and she was particularly anxious to hear.  For this was the fourth of October, and on the second he was to have delivered the first of his addresses.  How had the frail prophet sped?  She had her fears.  For her weekly “evenings” in Brown’s Buildings had shown her a good deal of the passionate strength of feeling developed during the past year in connection with this particular propaganda.  She doubted whether the London working man at the present moment was likely to give even Hallin a fair hearing on the point.  However, Louis Craven was to be there.  And he had promised to write even if Susie Hallin could find no time.  Some report ought to reach Mellor by the evening.

Poor Cravens!  The young wife, who was expecting a baby, had behaved with great spirit through the Clarion trouble; and, selling their bits of furniture to pay their debts, they had gone to lodge near Anthony.  Louis had got some odds and ends of designing and artistic work to do through his brother’s influence; and was writing where he could, here and there.  Marcella had introduced them to the Hallins, and Susie Hallin was taking a motherly interest in the coming child.  Anthony, in his gloomy way, was doing all he could for them.  But the struggle was likely to be a hard one, and Marcella had recognised of late that in Louis as in Anthony there were dangerous possibilities of melancholy and eccentricity.  Her heart was often sore over their trouble and her own impotence.

Meantime for some wounds, at any rate, time had brought swift cautery!  Not three days after her final interview with Wharton, while the catastrophe in the Labour party was still in every one’s mouth, and the air was full of bitter speeches and recriminations, Hallin one evening laid down his newspaper with a sudden startled gesture, and then pushed it over to Marcella.  There, in the columns devoted to personal news of various sorts, appeared the announcement: 

“A marriage has been arranged between Mr. H.S.  Wharfon, M.P. for West Brookshire, and Lady Selina Farrell, only surviving daughter of Lord Alresford.  The ceremony will probably take place somewhere about Easter next.  Meanwhile Mr. Wharton, whose health has suffered of late from his exertions in and out of the House, has been ordered to the East for rest by his medical advisers.  He and his friend Sir William Ffolliot start for French Cochin China in a few days.  Their object is to explore the famous ruined temples of Angkor in Cambodia, and if the season is favourable they may attempt to ascend the Mekong.  Mr. Wharton is paired for the remainder of the session.”

“Did you know anything of this?” said Hallin, with that careful carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.

“Nothing,” she said quietly.

Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled depths of feeling, drove her on.  She, too, put down the paper, and laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight laugh: