She, left behind, sat quiet in the old library for a few lonely minutes.  The boy’s plight made her alternately scornful and repentant of her sharpness to him.  As to his report, one moment it plunged her in an anguish she dared not fathom; the next she was incredulous—­could not simply make herself take the thing as real.

But one thing had been real—­that word from Aldous to her of “marriage”!  The nostril dilated, the breast heaved, as she lost all thought of Frank in a resentful passion that could neither justify nor calm itself.  It seemed still as though he had struck her.  Yet she knew well that she had nothing to forgive.

* * * * *

Next morning she went down to the village meaning to satisfy herself on two or three points connected with the new cottages.  On the way she knocked at the Rectory garden-door, in the hope of finding Mary Harden and persuading her to come with her.

She had not seen much of Mary since their return.  Still, she had had time to be painfully struck once or twice with the white and bloodless look of the Rector’s sister, and with a certain patient silence about her which seemed to Marcella new.  Was it the monotony of the life? or had both of them been overworking and underfeeding as usual?  The Rector had received Marcella with his old gentle but rather distant kindness.  Two years before he had felt strongly about many of her proceedings, and had expressed himself frankly enough, at least to Mary.  Now he had put his former disapprovals out of his mind, and was only anxious to work smoothly with the owner of Mellor.  He had a great respect for “dignities,” and she, as far as the village was concerned, was to be his “dignity” henceforward.  Moreover, he humbly and truly hoped that she might be able to enlighten him as to a good many modern conceptions and ideas about the poor, for which, absorbed as he was, either in almsgiving of the traditional type, or spiritual ministration, or sacramental theory, he had little time, and, if the truth were known, little affinity.

In answer to her knock Marcella heard a faint “Come in” from the interior of the house.  She walked into the dining-room, and found Mary sitting by the little table in tears.  There were some letters before her, which she pushed away as Marcella entered, but she did not attempt to disguise her agitation.

“What is it, dear?  Tell me,” said Marcella, sitting down beside her, and kissing one of the hands she held.

And Mary told her.  It was the story of her life—­a simple tale of ordinary things, such as wring the quiet hearts and train the unnoticed saints of this world.  In her first youth, when Charles Harden was for a time doing some divinity lecturing in his Oxford college, Mary had gone up to spend a year with him in lodgings.  Their Sunday teas and other small festivities were frequented by her brother’s friends, men of like type with himself, and most of