and there wide breadths of light
from the unshuttered and curtainless windows.

"Isn't it the very poetry of night and solitude?" he said, looking in
with her. "You love the place; but did you ever see it so lovable? The
dead are here; you did right to come and seek them! Look at your
namesake, in that ray. To-night she lives! She knows that is her husband
opposite--those are her books beside her. And the rebel!"--he pointed
smiling to the portrait of John Boyce. "When you are gone I shall shut
myself up here--sit in his chair, invoke him--and put my speech
together. I am nervous about to-morrow" (he was bound, as she knew, to a
large Labour Congress in the Midlands, where he was to preside), "and
sleep will make no terms with me. Ah!--how strange! Who can that be
passing the avenue?"

He made a step or two into the room, and put up his hand to his brow,
looking intently. Involuntarily, yet with a thrill, Marcella followed.
They walked to the window.

"It is _Hurd_!" she cried in a tone of distress, pressing her face
against the glass. "Out at this time, and with a gun! Oh, dear, dear!"

There could be no question that it was Hurd. Wharton had seen him linger
in the shadowy edge of the avenue, as though reconnoitring, and now, as
he stealthily crossed the moonlit grass, his slouching dwarf's figure,
his large head, and the short gun under his arm, were all plainly
visible.

"What do you suppose he is after?" said Wharton, still gazing, his hands
in his pockets.

"I don't know; he wouldn't poach on _our_ land; I'm sure he wouldn't!
Besides, there is nothing to poach."--Wharton smiled.--"He must be
going, after all, to Lord Maxwell's coverts! They are just beyond the
avenue, on the side of the hill. Oh! it is too disappointing! Can we do
anything?"

She looked at her companion with troubled eyes. This incursion of
something sadly and humanly real seemed suddenly to have made it natural
to be standing beside him there at that strange hour. Her conscience was
soothed.

Wharton shook his head.

"I don't see what we could do. How strong the instinct is! I told you
that woman had a secret. Well, it is only one form--the squalid
peasant's form--of the same instinct which sends the young fellows of
our class ruffling it and chancing it all over the world. It is the
instinct to take one's fling, to get out of the rut, to claim one's
innings against the powers that be--Nature, or the law, or convention."

"I know al