“Yes, mamma.”

“Will you come in?  There are some letters.”

“It is the will,” thought Marcella, as Mrs. Boyce turned back to the hotel, and she followed.

Mrs. Boyce shut the door of their sitting-room, and then went up to her daughter with a manner which suddenly struck and startled Marcella.  There was natural agitation and trouble in it.

“There is something in the will, Marcella, which will, I fear, annoy and distress you.  Your father inserted it without consulting me.  I want to know what you think ought to be done.  You will find that Lord Maxwell and I have been appointed joint executors.”

Marcella turned pale.

“Lord Maxwell!” she said, bewildered. “Lord Maxwell—­Aldous!  What do you mean, mamma?”

Mrs. Boyce put the will into her hands, and, pointing the way among the technicalities she had been perusing while Marcella was still lingering in the garden, showed her the paragraph in question.  The words of the will were merely formal:  “I hereby appoint,” &c., and no more; but in a communication from the family solicitor, Mr. French, which Mrs. Boyce silently handed to her daughter after she had read the legal disposition, the ladies were informed that Mr. Boyce had, before quitting England, written a letter to Lord Maxwell, duly sealed and addressed, with instructions that it should be forwarded to its destination immediately after the writer’s burial.  “Those instructions,” said Mr. French, “I have carried out.  I understand that Lord Maxwell was not consulted as to his appointment as executor prior to the drawing up of the will.  But you will no doubt hear from him at once, and as soon as we know that he consents to act, we can proceed immediately to probate.”

“Mamma, how could he?” said Marcella, in a low, suffocated voice, letting will and letter fall upon her knee.

“Did he give you no warning in that talk you had with him at Mellor?” said Mrs. Boyce, after a minute’s silence.

“Not the least,” said Marcella, rising restlessly and beginning to walk up and down.  “He spoke to me about wishing to bring it on again—­asked me to let him write.  I told him it was all done with—­for ever!  As to my own feelings, I felt it was no use to speak of them; but I thought—­I believed, I had proved to him that Lord Maxwell had absolutely given up all idea of such a thing; and that it was already probable he would marry some one else.  I told him I would rather disappear from every one I knew than consent to it—­he could only humiliate us all by saying a word.  And now, after that!—­”

She stopped in her restless walk, pressing her hands miserably together.

“What does he want with us and our affairs?” she broke out.  “He wishes, of course, to have no more to do with me.  And now we force him—­force him into these intimate relations.  What can papa have said in that letter to him?  What can he have said?  Oh! it is unbearable!  Can’t we write at once?”