own the caddy amid the
delicate china crowded on the tray, with all the quiet precision of her
ordinary manner.

"You will have to wait for your tea," she said, "the water doesn't
nearly boil."

Marcella went up to the fire and, kneeling before it, put the logs with
which it was piled together. But she could not contain herself for long.

"Will you go to the Court, mamma?" she asked quickly, without turning
round.

There was a pause. Then Mrs. Boyce said drily--

"Miss Raeburn's proceedings are a little unexpected. We have been here
four months, within two miles of her, and it has never occurred to her
to call. Now she calls and asks us to luncheon in the same afternoon.
Either she took too little notice of us before, or she takes too much
now--don't you think so?"

Marcella was silent a moment. Should she confess? It began to occur to
her for the first time that in her wild independence she had been taking
liberties with her mother.

"Mamma!"

"Yes."

"I asked Mr. Aldous Raeburn the other day whether everybody here was
going to cut us! Papa told me that Lord Maxwell had written him an
uncivil letter and--"

"You--asked--Mr. Raeburn--" said Mrs. Boyce, quickly. "What do you
mean?"

Marcella turned round and met the flash of her mother's eyes.

"I couldn't help it," she said in a low hurried voice. "It seemed so
horrid to feel everybody standing aloof--we were walking together--he
was very kind and friendly--and I asked him to explain."

"I see!" said Mrs. Boyce. "And he went to his aunt--and she went to Lady
Winterbourne--they were compassionate--and there are the cards. You have
certainly taken us all in hand, Marcella!"

Marcella felt an instant's fear--fear of the ironic power in the
sparkling look so keenly fixed on her offending self; she shrank before
the proud reserve expressed in every line of her mother's fragile
imperious beauty. Then a cry of nature broke from the girl.

"You have got used to it, mamma! I feel as if it would kill me to live
here, shut off from everybody--joining with nobody--with no friendly
feelings or society. It was bad enough in the old lodging-house days;
but here--why _should_ we?"

Mrs. Boyce had certainly grown pale.

"I supposed you would ask sooner or later," she said in a low determined
voice, with what to Marcella was a quite new note of reality in it.
"Probably Mr. Raeburn told you--but you must of course have guessed it
long ago--that society does not loo