their first chance encounter weeks ago in the vicarage drawing-room. All
through there had been on his side the uncomfortable knowledge of his
grandfather's antipathy to Richard Boyce, and of the social steps to
which that antipathy would inevitably lead. But Miss Boyce had never
shown the smallest consciousness, so far, of anything untoward or
unusual in her position. She had been clearly taken up with the interest
and pleasure of this new spectacle upon which she had entered. The old
house, its associations, its history, the beautiful country in which it
lay, the speech and characteristics of rural labour as compared with
that of the town,--he had heard her talk of all these things with a
freshness, a human sympathy, a freedom from conventional phrase, and, no
doubt, a touch of egotism and extravagance, which rivetted attention.
The egotism and extravagance, however, after a first moment of critical
discomfort on his part, had not in the end repelled him at all. The
girl's vivid beauty glorified them; made them seem to him a mere special
fulness of life. So that in his new preoccupation with herself, and by
contact with her frank self-confidence, he had almost forgotten her
position, and his own indirect relation to it. Then had come that
unlucky note from Mellor; his grandfather's prompt reply to it; his own
ineffective protest; and now this tongue-tiedness--this clumsy
intrusion--which she must feel to be an indelicacy--an outrage.

Suddenly he heard Miss Harden saying, with penitent emphasis, "I _am_
stupid! I have left the scissors and the wire on the table at home; we
can't get on without them; it is really too bad of me."

"I will go for them," said Marcella promptly. "Here is the hand-cart
just arrived and some people come to help; you can't be spared. I will
be back directly."