Then they were to go immediately up to London for the opening of Parliament.

The furnishing of the Mayfair house was being pressed on.

In her new-born impatience with such things, Marcella had hardly of late concerned herself with it at all, and Miss Raeburn, scandalised, yet not unwilling, had been doing the whole of it, subject to conscientious worryings of the bride, whenever she could be got hold of, on the subject of papers and curtains.
As they sat silent, the unspoken idea in the mother's mind was--"Eight weeks more will carry us past the execution." Mrs.Boyce had already possessed herself very clearly of the facts of the case, and it was her perception that Marcella was throwing herself headlong into a hopeless struggle--together with something else--a confession perhaps of a touch of greatness in the girl's temper, passionate and violent as it was, that had led to this unwonted softness of manner, this absence of sarcasm.
Very much the same thought--only treated as a nameless horror not to be recognised or admitted--was in Marcella's mind also, joined however with another, unsuspected even by Mrs.Boyce's acuteness.

"Very likely--when I tell him--he will not want to marry me at all--and of course I shall tell him." But not yet--certainly not yet.

She had the instinctive sense that during the next few weeks she should want all her dignity with Aldous, that she could not afford to put herself at a disadvantage with him.