
resource of a woman who would indulge her rancour whilst keeping up the inward
pretence of sanctity. If she erred in the ways characteristic of her sex, it
should at all events be a conscious degradation.
    »Have you seen that odd creature Malkin lately?« she asked of Christian, a
day or two after.
    »No, I haven't; I thought of him to make up our dinner on Sunday; but you
had rather not have him here, I daresay?«
    »Oh, he is amusing. Ask him by all means,« said Marcella, carelessly.
    »He may have heard about Peak from Earwaker, you know. If he begins to talk
before people« -
    »Things have gone too far for such considerations,« replied his sister, with
a petulance strange to her habits of speech.
    »Well, yes,« admitted Christian, glancing at her. »We can't be responsible.«
    He reproached himself for this attitude towards Peak, but was heartily glad
that Marcella seemed to have learnt to regard the intriguer with a wholesome
indifference.
    On the second day after Christmas, as they sat talking idly in the dusking
twilight, the door of the drawing-room was thrown open, and a visitor announced.
The name answered with such startling suddenness to the thought with which
Marcella had been occupied that, for an instant, she could not believe that she
had heard aright. Yet it was undoubtedly Mr. Warricombe who presented himself.
He came forward with a slightly hesitating air, but Christian made haste to
smooth the situation. With the help of those commonplaces by which even
intellectual people are at times compelled to prove their familiarity with
social usages, conversation was set in movement.
    Buckland could not be quite himself. The consciousness that he had sought
these people not at all for their own sake made him formal and dry; his glances,
his half-smile, indicated a doubt whether the Moxeys belonged entirely to the
sphere in which he was at home. Hence a rather excessive politeness, such as the
man who sets much store on breeding exhibits to those who may at any moment,
even in a fraction of a syllable, prove themselves his inferiors. With men and
women of the unmistakably lower orders, Buckland could converse in a genial tone
that recommended him to their esteem; on the borderland of refinement, his
sympathies were repressed, and he held the distinctive part of his mind in
reserve.
    Marcella desired to talk agreeably, but a weight lay upon her tongue she was
struck with the resemblance in Warricombe's features to those of his
