There was much bitter yearning in the girl’s heart as she sat, breathed on by the soft Italian wind blowing from this enchanted sea.  The inner cry was that her mother did not love her, had never loved her, and might even now—­weird, incredible thought!—­be planning to desert her.  Hallin was dead—­who else was there that cared for her or thought of her?  Betty Macdonald wrote often, wild, “schwaermerisch” letters.  Marcella looked for them with eagerness, and answered them affectionately.  But Betty must soon marry, and then all that would be at an end.  Meanwhile Marcella knew well it was Betty’s news that made Betty’s adoration doubly welcome.  Aldous Raeburn—­she never did or could think of him under his new name—­was apparently in London, much occupied in politics, and constantly, as it seemed, in Betty’s society.  What likelihood was there that her life and his would ever touch again?  She thought often of her confession to Hallin, but in great perplexity of feeling.  She had, of course, said no word of secrecy to him at the time.  Such a demand in a man’s last hour would have been impossible.  She had simply followed a certain mystical love and obedience in telling him what he asked to know, and in the strong spontaneous impulse had thought of nothing beyond.  Afterwards her pride had suffered fresh martyrdom.  Could he, with his loving instinct, have failed to give his friend some sign?  If so, it had been unwelcome, for since the day of Hallin’s funeral she and Aldous had been more complete strangers than before.  Lady Winterbourne, Betty, Frank Leven, had written since her father’s death; but from him, nothing.

By the way, Frank Leven had succeeded at Christmas, by old Sir Charles Leven’s unexpected death, to the baronetcy and estates.  How would that affect his chances with Betty?—­if indeed there were any such chances left.

As to her own immediate future, Marcella knew from many indications that Mellor would be hers at once.  But in her general tiredness of mind and body she was far more conscious of the burden of her inheritance than of its opportunities.  All that vivid castle-building gift which was specially hers, and would revive, was at present in abeyance.  She had pined once for power and freedom, that she might make a Kingdom of Heaven of her own, quickly.  Now power and freedom, up to a certain point, were about to be put into her hands; and instead of plans for acting largely and bountifully on a plastic outer world, she was saying to herself, hungrily, that unless she had something close to her to love and live for, she could do nothing.  If her mother would end these unnatural doubts, if she would begin to make friends with her own daughter, and only yield herself to be loved and comforted, why then it might be possible to think of the village and the straw-plaiting!  Otherwise—­the girl’s attitude as she sat dreaming in the sun showed her despondency.

She was roused by her mother’s voice calling her from the other end of the pergola.