How long is it, Miss Boyce, since you settled at Mellor ?" "Six months." She looked straight before her and not at him as she answered, and her tone made Miss Raeburn's blood boil.
Lord Wandle--a battered, coarsened, but still magnificent-looking man of sixty--examined the speaker an instant from half-shut eyes, then put up his hand to his moustache with a half-smile.
"You like the country ?" "Yes." As she spoke her reluctant monosyllable, the girl had really no conception of the degree of hostility expressed in her manner.

Instead she was hating herself for her own pusillanimity.
"And the people ?" "Some of them." And straightway she raised her fierce black eyes to his, and the man before her understood, as plainly as any one need understand, that, whoever else Miss Boyce might like, she did not like Lord Wandle, and wished for no more conversation with him.
Her interrogator turned to Aldous with smiling _aplomb_.
"Thank you, my dear Aldous.

Now let me retire.

No one must _monopolise_ your charming lady." And again he bowed low to her, this time with an ironical emphasis not to be mistaken, and walked away.
Lady Winterbourne saw him go up to his wife, who had followed him at a distance, and speak to her roughly with a frown.

They left the room, and presently, through the other door of the library which opened on the corridor, she saw them pass, as though they were going to their carriage.
Marcella rose.