Aldous replied with a certain slow stiffness—­

“Marcella Boyce!—­Richard Boyce’s daughter.  I saw her first six weeks ago.”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Lord Maxwell, falling back a step or two, and staring at his companion.  Aldous watched him with anxiety.

“You know that fellow’s history, Aldous?”

“Richard Boyce?  Not in detail.  If you will tell me now all you know, it will be a help.  Of course, I see that you and the neighbourhood mean to cut him,—­and—­for the sake of—­of Miss Boyce and her mother, I should be glad to find a way out.”

“Good heavens!” said Lord Maxwell, beginning to pace the room, hands pressed behind him, head bent.  “Good heavens! what a business! what an extraordinary business!”

He stopped short in front of Aldous.  “Where have you been meeting her—­this young lady?”

“At the Hardens’—­sometimes in Mellor village.  She goes about among the cottages a great deal.”

“You have not proposed to her?”

“I was not certain of myself till to-day.  Besides it would have been presumption so far.  She has shown me nothing but the merest friendliness.”

“What, you can suppose she would refuse you!” cried Lord Maxwell, and could not for the life of him keep the sarcastic intonation out of his voice.

Aldous’s look showed distress.  “You have not seen her, grandfather,” he said quietly.

Lord Maxwell began to pace again, trying to restrain the painful emotion that filled him.  Of course, Aldous had been entrapped; the girl had played upon his pity, his chivalry—­for obvious reasons.

Aldous tried to soothe him, to explain, but Lord Maxwell hardly listened.  At last he threw himself into his chair again with a long breath.

“Give me time, Aldous—­give me time.  The thought of marrying my heir to that man’s daughter knocks me over a little.”

There was silence again.  Then Lord Maxwell looked at his watch with old-fashioned precision.

“There is half an hour before dinner.  Sit down, and let us talk this thing out.”

* * * * *

The conversation thus started, however, was only begun by dinner-time; was resumed after Miss Raeburn—­the small, shrewd, bright-eyed person who governed Lord Maxwell’s household—­had withdrawn; and was continued in the library some time beyond his lordship’s usual retiring hour.  It was for the most part a monologue on the part of the grandfather, broken by occasional words from his companion; and for some time Marcella Boyce herself—­the woman whom Aldous desired to marry—­was hardly mentioned in it.  Oppressed and tormented by a surprise which struck, or seemed to strike, at some of his most cherished ideals and just resentments, Lord Maxwell was bent upon letting his grandson know, in all their fulness, the reasons why no daughter of Richard Boyce could ever be, in the true sense, fit wife for a Raeburn.