rn's affair. I think I should take him into
account more than Marcella does, if I were she. But probably she knows
best."

"Of course she does. He has lost his head; any one can see that. While
she is in the room, he is like a man possessed. It doesn't sit well on
that kind of fellow. It makes him ridiculous. I told him half the
settlement would be ample. She would only spend the rest on nonsense."

"You told him that?"

"Yes, I did. Oh!"--with an angry look at her--"I suppose you thought I
should want to sponge upon her? I am as much obliged to you as usual!"

A red spot rose in his wife's thin cheek. But she turned and answered
him gently, so gently that he had the rare sensation of having triumphed
over her. He allowed himself to be mollified, and she stood there over
the fire, chatting with him for some time, a friendly natural note in
her voice which was rare and, insensibly, soothed him like an opiate.
She chatted about Marcella's trousseau gowns, detailing her own
contrivances for economy; about the probable day of the wedding, the
latest gossip of the election, and so on. He sat shading his eyes from
the firelight, and now and then throwing in a word or two. The inmost
soul of him was very piteous, harrowed often by a new dread--the dread
of dying. The woman beside him held him in the hollow of her hand. In
the long wrestle between her nature and his, she had conquered. His fear
of her and his need of her had even come to supply the place of a dozen
ethical instincts he was naturally without.

Some discomfort, probably physical, seemed at last to break up his
moment of rest.

"Well, I tell you, I often wish it were the other man," he said, with
some impatience. "Raeburn 's so d----d superior. I suppose I offended
him by what I said of Marcella's whims, and the risk of letting her
control so much money at her age, and with her ideas. You never saw such
an air!--all very quiet, of course. He buttoned his coat and got up to
go, as though I were no more worth considering than the table. Neither
he nor his precious grandfather need alarm themselves: I shan't trouble
them as a visitor. If I shock them, they bore me--so we're quits.
Marcella'll have to come here if she wants to see her father. But owing
to your charming system of keeping her away from us all her childhood,
she's not likely to want."

"You mean Mr. Wharton by the other man?" said Mrs. Boyce, not defending
herself or Aldous.

"Yes, of course. B