Even the Hardens--so Marcella gathered from her friend and admirer Mary--unworldly dreamy folk, wrapt up in good works, and in the hastening of Christ's kingdom, were on the alert and beginning to take note.
It was not as though he were in the dark as to her antecedents.

He knew all--at any rate, more than she did--and yet it might end in his asking her to marry him.

What then?
Scarcely a quiver in the young form before the glass! _Love_, at such a thought, must have sunk upon its knees and hid its face for tender humbleness and requital.

Marcella only looked quietly at the beauty which might easily prove to be so important an arrow in her quiver.
What was stirring in her was really a passionate ambition--ambition to be the queen and arbitress of human lives--to be believed in by her friends, to make a mark for herself among women, and to make it in the most romantic and yet natural way, without what had always seemed to her the sordid and unpleasant drudgeries of the platform, of a tiresome co-operation with, or subordination to others who could not understand your ideas.
Of course, if it happened, people would say that she had tried to capture Aldous Raeburn for his money and position's sake.

Let them say it.