And he was not a man to be lightly played upon—­nay, rather a singularly reserved and scrupulous person.  So, at least, it had been always held concerning him.  Marcella was triumphantly conscious that he had not from the beginning given her much trouble.  But the common report of him made his recent manner towards her, this last action of his, the more significant.  Even the Hardens—­so Marcella gathered from her friend and admirer Mary—­unworldly dreamy folk, wrapt up in good works, and in the hastening of Christ’s kingdom, were on the alert and beginning to take note.

It was not as though he were in the dark as to her antecedents.  He knew all—­at any rate, more than she did—­and yet it might end in his asking her to marry him.  What then?

Scarcely a quiver in the young form before the glass! Love, at such a thought, must have sunk upon its knees and hid its face for tender humbleness and requital.  Marcella only looked quietly at the beauty which might easily prove to be so important an arrow in her quiver.

What was stirring in her was really a passionate ambition—­ambition to be the queen and arbitress of human lives—­to be believed in by her friends, to make a mark for herself among women, and to make it in the most romantic and yet natural way, without what had always seemed to her the sordid and unpleasant drudgeries of the platform, of a tiresome co-operation with, or subordination to others who could not understand your ideas.

Of course, if it happened, people would say that she had tried to capture Aldous Raeburn for his money and position’s sake.  Let them say it.  People with base minds must think basely; there was no help for it.  Those whom she would make her friends would know very well for what purpose she wanted money, power, and the support of such a man, and such a marriage.  Her modern realism played with the thought quite freely; her maidenliness, proud and pure as it was, being nowise ashamed.  Oh! for something to carry her deep into life; into the heart of its widest and most splendid opportunities!

She threw up her hands, clasping them above her head amid her clouds of curly hair—­a girlish excited gesture.

“I could revive the straw-plaiting; give them better teaching and better models.  The cottages should be rebuilt.  Papa would willingly hand the village over to me if I found the money!  We would have a parish committee to deal with the charities—­oh! the Hardens would come in.  The old people should have their pensions as of right.  No hopeless old age, no cringing dependence!  We would try co-operation on the land, and pull it through.  And not in Mellor only.  One might be the ruler, the regenerator of half a county!”

Memory brought to mind in vivid sequence the figures and incidents of the afternoon, of her village round with Mary Harden.