did
_them_ any harm. Let them 'gang their gait,' confound them!"--the little
dark man straightened himself fiercely--"I can get my pleasure out of
the land; and as for your mother, she'd not lift a finger to propitiate
one of them!"

In the last words, however, there was not a fraction of that sympathetic
pride which the ear expected, but rather fresh bitterness and grievance.

Marcella stood thinking, her mind travelling hither and thither with
lightning speed, now over the social events of the last six weeks--now
over incidents of those long-past holidays. Was this, indeed, the second
volume beginning--the natural sequel to those old mysterious histories
of shrinking, disillusion, and repulse?

"What was it you wanted about those coverts, papa?" she asked presently,
with a quick decision.

"What the deuce does it matter? If you want to know, I proposed to him
to exchange my coverts over by the Scrubs, which work in with his
shooting, for the wood down by the Home Farm. It was an exchange made
year after year in my father's time. When I spoke to the keeper, I found
it had been allowed to lapse. Your uncle let the shooting go to rack and
ruin after Harold's death. It gave me something to write about, and I
was determined to know where I stood--Well! the old Pharisee can go his
way: I'll go mine."

And with a spasmodic attempt to play the squire of Mellor on his native
heath, Richard Boyce rose, drew his emaciated frame to its full height,
and stood looking out drearily to his ancestral lawns--a picturesque and
elegant figure, for all its weakness and pitiableness.

"I shall ask Mr. Aldous Raeburn about it, if I see him in the village
to-day," said Marcella, quietly.

Her father started, and looked at her with some attention.

"What have you seen of Aldous Raeburn?" he inquired. "I remember hearing
that you had come across him."

"Certainly I have come across him. I have met him once or twice at the
Vicarage--and--oh! on one or two other occasions," said Marcella,
carelessly. "He has always made himself agreeable. Mr. Harden says his
grandfather is devoted to him, and will hardly ever let him go away from
home. He does a great deal for Lord Maxwell now: writes for him, and
helps to manage the estate; and next year, when the Tories come back and
Lord Maxwell is in office again--"

"Why, of course, there'll be plums for the grandson," said Mr. Boyce
with a sneer. "That goes without saying--though we are such a