Marcella went about all day under a vague sense of impending trouble—­the result, no doubt, of that intolerable threat of her father’s, against which she was, after all, so defenceless.

But whatever it was, it made her all the more nervous and sensitive about the Hallins; about her one true friend, to whom she was slowly revealing herself, even without speech; whose spiritual strength had been guiding and training her; whose physical weakness had drawn to him the maternal, the spending instincts which her nursing life had so richly developed.

She strolled down the drive to meet the post.  But there were no letters from London, and she came in, inclined to be angry indeed with Louis Craven for deserting her, but saying to herself at the same time that she must have heard if anything had gone wrong.

An hour or so later, just as the October evening was closing in, she was sitting dreaming over a dim wood-fire in the drawing-room.  Her father, as might have been expected, had been very tired and comatose all day.  Her mother was with him; the London nurse was to sit up, and Marcella felt herself forlorn and superfluous.

Suddenly, in the silence of the house, she heard the front-door bell ring.  There was a step in the hall—­she sprang up—­the door opened, and William, with fluttered emphasis, announced—­

“Lord Maxwell!”

In the dusk she could just see his tall form—­the short pause as he perceived her—­then her hand was in his, and the paralysing astonishment of that first instant had disappeared under the grave emotion of his look.

“Will you excuse me,” he said, “for coming at this hour?  But I am afraid you have heard nothing yet of our bad news—­and Hallin himself was anxious I should come and tell you.  Miss Hallin could not write, and Mr. Craven, I was to tell you, had been ill for a week with a chill.  You haven’t then seen any account of the lecture in the papers?”

“No; I have looked yesterday and to-day in our paper, but there was nothing—­”

“Some of the Radical papers reported it.  I hoped you might have seen it.  But when we got down here this afternoon, and there was nothing from you, both Miss Hallin and Edward felt sure you had not heard—­and I walked over.  It was a most painful, distressing scene, and he—­is very ill.”

“But you have brought him to the Court?” she said trembling, lost in the thought of Hallin, her quick breath coming and going.  “He was able to bear the journey?  Will you tell me?—­will you sit down?”

He thanked her hurriedly, and took a seat opposite to her, within the circle of the firelight, so that she saw his deep mourning and the look of repressed suffering.