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 l