hesitated.

"A carriage saves time. And if one goes about much, it does not cost so
much more than cabs."

"So you mean to go about much? Lady Winterbourne talks to me of
presenting you in May."

"That's Miss Raeburn," cried Marcella. "She says I must, and all the
family would be scandalised if I didn't go. But you can't imagine--"

She stopped and took off her hat, pushing the hair back from her
forehead. A look of worry and excitement had replaced the radiant glow
of her first resting moments.

"That you like it?" said Mrs. Boyce, bluntly. "Well, I don't know. Most
young women like pretty gowns, and great functions, and prominent
positions. I don't call you an ascetic, Marcella."

Marcella winced.

"One has to fit oneself to circumstances," she said proudly. "One may
hate the circumstances, but one can't escape them."

"Oh, I don't think you will hate your circumstances, my dear! You would
be very foolish if you did. Have you heard finally how much the
settlement is to be?"

"No," said Marcella, shortly. "I have not asked papa, nor anybody."

"It was only settled this morning. Your father told me hurriedly as he
went out. You are to have two thousand a year of your own."

The tone was dry, and the speaker's look as she turned towards her
daughter had in it a curious hostility; but Marcella did not notice her
mother's manner.

"It is too much," she said in a low voice.

She had thrown back her head against the chair in which she sat, and her
half-troubled eyes were wandering over the darkening expanse of lawn and
avenue.

"He said he wished you to feel perfectly free to live your own life, and
to follow out your own projects. Oh, for a person of projects, my dear,
it is not so much. You will do well to husband it. Keep it for yourself.
Get what _you_ want out of it: not what other people want."

Again Marcella's attention missed the note of agitation in her mother's
sharp manner. A soft look--a look of compunction--passed across her
face. Mrs. Boyce began to put her working things away, finding it too
dark to do any more.

"By the way," said the mother, suddenly, "I suppose you will be going
over to help him in his canvassing this next few weeks? Your father says
the election will be certainly in February."

Marcella moved uneasily.

"He knows," she said at last, "that I don't agree with him in so many
things. He is so full of this Peasant Proprietors Bill. And I hate
peasant properties. They ar