"You didn't know Ancoats, I think, before this visit, did you?"
"Only as one knows the merest acquaintance. Fontenoy introduced me to him at the club."
Marcella sighed. She seemed to be arguing something with herself. At last, with a quick look towards the approaches of the garden, she said in a low voice:
"I think you must know that his friends are not happy about him?"
It so happened that Watton had found opportunity to show Tressady that morning a paragraph from one of the numerous papers that batten on the British peer, his dress, his morals, and his sport. The paragraph, without names, without even initials, contained an outline of Lord Ancoats's affairs which Harding, who knew everything of a scandalous nature, declared to be well informed. It had made George whistle; and afterwards he had watched Mrs. Allison go to church with a new interest in her proceedings.
So that when Marcella threw out her hesitating question, he said at once:
"I know what the papers are beginning to say—that is, I have seen a paragraph—"
"Oh! those newspapers!" she said in distress. "We are all afraid of some madness, and any increase of talk may hasten it. There is no one who can control him, and of late he has not even tried to conceal things."
"It is a determined face," said George. "I am afraid he will take his way. How is it that he comes to be so unlike his mother?"
"How is it that adoration and sacrifice count for so little?" said
Marcella, sadly. "She has given him all the best of her life."