worry of her awakening curiosities, and one of his resolutions in coming
to Mellor Park had been to keep up his dignity with her. But the sight
of her dark face bent upon him, softened by a quick and womanly
compassion, seemed to set free a new impulse in him.

"He writes in the third person, if you want to know, my dear, and refers
me to his agent, very much as though I were some London grocer who had
just bought the place. Oh, it is quite evident what he means. They were
here without moving all through June and July, and it is now three weeks
at least since he and Miss Raeburn came back from Scotland, and not a
card nor a word from either of them! Nor from the Winterbournes, nor the
Levens. Pleasant! Well, my dear, you must make up your mind to it. I did
think--I was fool enough to think--that when I came back to the old
place, my father's old friends would let bygones be bygones. I never 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.