cup of senna-tea, and at long and regular
intervals throughout the day with beef-tea and gruel; and that no one
should come to see and talk with her, unless, indeed, it were the
doctor, quiet being in all cases of sickness the first condition of
recovery, and the natural schoolgirl in Miss Frederick's persuasion
being more or less inclined to complain without cause if illness were
made agreeable.

For some fourteen hours, therefore, on these days of durance Marcella
was left almost wholly alone, nothing but a wild mass of black hair and
a pair of roving, defiant eyes in a pale face showing above the
bedclothes whenever the housemaid chose to visit her--a pitiable morsel,
in truth, of rather forlorn humanity. For though she had her movements
of fierce revolt, when she was within an ace of throwing the senna-tea
in Martha's face, and rushing downstairs in her nightgown to denounce
Miss Frederick in the midst of an astonished schoolroom, something
generally interposed; not conscience, it is to be feared, or any wish
"to be good," but only an aching, inmost sense of childish loneliness
and helplessness; a perception that she had indeed tried everybody's
patience to the limit, and that these days in bed represented crises
which must be borne with even by such a rebel as Marcie Boyce.

So she submitted, and presently learnt, under dire stress of boredom, to
amuse herself a good deal by developing a natural capacity for dreaming
awake. Hour by hour she followed out an endless story of which she was
always the heroine. Before the annoyance of her afternoon gruel, which
she loathed, was well forgotten, she was in full fairy-land again,
figuring generally as the trusted friend and companion of the Princess
of Wales--of that beautiful Alexandra, the top and model of English
society whose portrait in the window of the little stationer's shop at
Marswell--the small country town near Cliff House--had attracted the
child's attention once, on a dreary walk, and had ever since governed
her dreams. Marcella had no fairy-tales, but she spun a whole cycle for
herself around the lovely Princess who came to seem to her before long
her own particular property. She had only to shut her eyes and she had
caught her idol's attention--either by some look or act of passionate
yet unobtrusive homage as she passed the royal carriage in the
street--or by throwing herself in front of the divinity's runaway
horses--or by a series of social steps easil