"Nothing. He vows that everything is all right; that he knows a pack of slanderers have been 'yelping at him,' and he wishes both they and his mother would let him alone." "His mother!" cried Marcella, outraged. "Well, I suppose I said to him the kind of thing you would evidently like to say. But with no result. He merely laughed, and chattered about everything under the sun--his race-horses, new plays, politics--Heaven knows what! He is in an excited state--feverish, restless, and, I should think, unhappy. But he would tell nothing--to me." "How much do you think she knows?" "His mother? Nothing, I should say. Every now and then I detect a note of extra anxiety when she talks to him; and there is evidently something in her mind, some impression from his manner, perhaps, which is driving her more keenly than ever towards this marriage. But I don't believe a single one of the stories that have reached us has reached her. And now--here is this poor girl--and even my dull eyes have noticed that to-night he has purposely, markedly, avoided her." Marcella felt her cheek flame. "And when one thinks of his behaviour in the winter!" she cried. They wandered on along a path that skirted the wood, talking anxiously about the matter which had in truth brought them to Castle Luton. In spite of the comparative gentleness of English political relations, neither Maxwell nor Marcella, perhaps, would willingly have become Charlotte Allison's guests at a moment when her house was actually the headquarters of a violent and effective opposition to Maxwell's policy, when moreover the leader of that opposition was likely to be of the party. But about a fortnight before Whitsuntide some tales of young Ancoats had suddenly reached Maxwell's ears, with such effect that on his next meeting with Ancoats's mother he practically invited himself and Marcella--greatly to Mrs. Allison's surprise--to Castle Luton for Whitsuntide. For the boy had been Maxwell's ward, and Henry Allison had been the intimate friend and comrade of Maxwell's father. And Maxwell's feeling for his father, and for his father's friends, was of such a kind that his guardian's duties had gone deep with him. He had done his best for the boy, and since Ancoats had reached his majority his ex-guardian had still kept him anxiously in mind.