“Mrs. Boyce, I am sorry to say, does not seem to be strong,” said Miss Raeburn, bending over the heel of her stocking.  “I wish we could have had the pleasure of seeing her to-day.”

There was a pause.  Lady Winterbourne’s tragic eyes were once more considering Marcella.

“I hope you will come and see me,” she said at last abruptly—­“and Mrs. Boyce too.”

The voice was very soft and refined though so deep, and Marcella looking up was suddenly magnetised.

“Yes, I will,” she said, all her face melting into sensitive life.  “Mamma won’t go anywhere, but I will come, if you will ask me.”

“Will you come next Tuesday?” said Lady Winterbourne quickly—­“come to tea, and I will drive you back.  Mr. Raeburn told me about you.  He says—­you read a great deal.”

The solemnity of the last words, the fixedness of the tragic look, were not to be resisted.  Marcella laughed out, and both ladies simultaneously thought her extraordinarily radiant and handsome.

“How can he know?  Why, I have hardly talked about books to him at all.”

“Well! here he comes,” said Lady Winterbourne, smiling suddenly; “so I can ask him.  But I am sure he did say so.”

It was now Marcella’s turn to colour.  Aldous Raeburn crossed the room, greeted Lady Winterbourne, and next moment she felt her hand in his.

“You did tell me, Aldous, didn’t you,” said Lady Winterbourne, “that Miss Boyce was a great reader?”

The speaker had known Aldous Raeburn as a boy, and was, moreover, a sort of cousin, which explained the Christian name.

Aldous smiled.

“I said I thought Miss Boyce was like you and me, and had a weakness that way, Lady Winterbourne.  But I won’t be cross-examined!”

“I don’t think I am a great reader,” said Marcella, bluntly—­“at least I read a great deal, but I hardly ever read a book through.  I haven’t patience.”

“You want to get at everything so quickly?” said Miss Raeburn, looking up sharply.

“I suppose so!” said Marcella.  “There seems to be always a hundred things tearing one different ways, and no time for any of them.”

“Yes, when one is young one feels like that,” said Lady Winterbourne, sighing.  “When one is old one accepts one’s limitations.  When I was twenty I never thought that I should still be an ignorant and discontented woman at nearly seventy.”

“It is because you are so young still, Lady Winterbourne, that you feel so,” said Aldous, laughing at her, as one does at an old friend.  “Why, you are younger than any of us!  I feel all brushed and stirred up—­a boy at school again—­after I have been to see you!”

“Well, I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure,” said Lady Winterbourne, sighing again.  Then she looked at the pair beside her—­at the alert brightness in the man’s strong and quiet face as he sat stooping forward, with his hands upon his knees, hardly able to keep his eyes for an instant from the dark apparition beside him—­at the girl’s evident shyness and pride.