"About a week, I believe," said Aldous, shortly. "Mr. Boyce has taken a fancy to him."
They walked on in silence, and then Aldous turned to his friend in distress.
"You know, Hallin, this wind is much too cold for you. You are the most wilful of men. Why would you walk?"
"Hold your tongue, sir, and listen to me. I think your Marcella is beautiful, and as interesting as she is beautiful. There!"
Aldous started, then turned a grateful face upon him.
"You must get to know her well," he said, but with some constraint.
"Of course. I wonder," said Hallin, musing, "whom she has got hold of among the Venturists. Shall you persuade her to come out of that, do you think, Aldous?"
"No!" said Raeburn, cheerfully. "Her sympathies and convictions go with them."
Then, as they passed through the village, he began to talk of quite other things—college friends, a recent volume of philosophical essays, and so on. Hallin, accustomed and jealously accustomed as he was to be the one person in the world with whom Raeburn talked freely, would not to-night have done or said anything to force a strong man's reserve. But his own mind was full of anxiety.