He rose and stood with his back to the fire, his spare frame stiffening under his nervous determination to assert himself—­to hold up his head physically and morally against those who would repress him.

Richard Boyce took his social punishment badly.  He had passed his first weeks at Mellor in a tremble of desire that his father’s old family and country friends should recognise him again and condone his “irregularities.”  All sorts of conciliatory ideas had passed through his head.  He meant to let people see that he would be a good neighbour if they would give him the chance—­not like that miserly fool, his brother Robert.  The past was so much past; who now was more respectable or more well intentioned than he?  He was an impressionable imaginative man in delicate health; and the tears sometimes came into his eyes as he pictured himself restored to society—­partly by his own efforts, partly, no doubt, by the charms and good looks of his wife and daughter—­forgiven for their sake, and for the sake also of that store of virtue he had so laboriously accumulated since that long-past catastrophe.  Would not most men have gone to the bad altogether, after such a lapse?  He, on the contrary, had recovered himself, had neither drunk nor squandered, nor deserted his wife and child.  These things, if the truth were known, were indeed due rather to a certain lack of physical energy and vitality, which age had developed in him, than to self-conquest; but he was no doubt entitled to make the most of them.  There were signs indeed that his forecast had been not at all unreasonable.  His womenkind were making their way.  At the very moment when Lord Maxwell had written him a quelling letter, he had become aware that Marcella was on good terms with Lord Maxwell’s heir.  Had he not also been stopped that morning in a remote lane by Lord Winterbourne and Lord Maxwell on their way back from the meet, and had not both recognised and shaken hands with him?  And now there were these cards.

Unfortunately, in spite of Raeburn’s opinion to the contrary, no man in such a position and with such a temperament ever gets something without claiming more—­and more than he can conceivably or possibly get.  Startled and pleased at first by the salutation which Lord Maxwell and his companion had bestowed upon him, Richard Boyce had passed his afternoon in resenting and brooding over the cold civility of it.  So these were the terms he was to be on with them—­the deuce take them and their pharisaical airs!  If all the truth were known, most men would look foolish; and the men who thanked God that they were not as other men, soonest of all.  He wished he had not been taken by surprise; he wished he had not answered them; he would show them in the future that he would eat no dirt for them or anybody else.