“And now,” she said, in half-coherent despair, “do you know what you are doing?  You are cutting yourself off from me—­refusing to have any real bond to me just when I want it most.  I suppose you think that I shall be satisfied with the property and the power, and the chance of doing what I like.  But”—­she tried her best to gulp back her pain, her outraged feeling, to speak quietly—­“I am not like that really any more.  I can take it all up, with courage and heart, if you will stay with me, and let me—­let me—­love you and care for you.  But, by myself, I feel as if I could not face it!  I am not likely to be happy—­for a long time—­except in doing what work I can.  It is very improbable that I shall marry.  I dare say you don’t believe me, but it is true.  We are both sad and lonely.  We have no one but each other.  And then you talk in this ghastly way of separating from me—­casting me off.”

Her voice trembled and broke, she looked at her mother with a frowning passion.

Mrs. Boyce still sat silent, studying her daughter with a strange, brooding eye.  Under her unnatural composure there was in reality a half-mad impatience, the result of physical and moral reaction.  This beauty, this youth, talk of sadness, of finality!  What folly!  Still, she was stirred, undermined in spite of herself.

“There!” she said, with a restless gesture, “let us, please, talk of it no more.  I will come back with you—­I will do my best.  We will let the matter of my future settlement alone for some months, at any rate, if that will satisfy you or be any help to you.”

She made a movement as though to rise from her low chair.  But the great waters swelled in Marcella—­swelled and broke.  She fell on her knees again by her mother, and before Mrs. Boyce could stop her she had thrown her young arms close round the thin, shrunken form.

“Mother!” she said.  “Mother, be good to me—­love me—­you are all I have!”

And she kissed the pale brow and cheek with a hungry, almost a violent tenderness that would not be gainsaid, murmuring wild incoherent things.

Mrs. Boyce first tried to put her away, then submitted, being physically unable to resist, and at last escaped from her with a sudden sob that went to the girl’s heart.  She rose, went to the window, struggled hard for composure, and finally left the room.

But that evening, for the first time, she let Marcella put her on the sofa, tend her, and read to her.  More wonderful still, she went to sleep while Marcella was reading.  In the lamplight her face looked piteously old and worn.  The girl sat for long with her hands clasped round her knees, gazing down upon it, in a trance of pain and longing.

* * * * *

Marcella was awake early next morning, listening to the full voice of the sea as it broke three hundred feet below, against the beach and rocky walls of the little town.  She was lying in a tiny white room, one of the cells of the old monastery, and the sun as it rose above the Salernian mountains—­the mountains that hold Paestum in their blue and purple shadows—­danced in gold on the white wall.  The bell of the cathedral far below tolled the hour.  She supposed it must be six o’clock.  Two hours more or so, and Lord Maxwell’s letter might be looked for.