Marcella followed, reading.  The note was from Miss Raeburn, and it contained an invitation to Mrs. Boyce and her daughter to take luncheon at the Court on the following Friday.  The note was courteously and kindly worded.  “We should be so glad,” said the writer, “to show you and Miss Boyce our beautiful woods while they are still at their best, in the way of autumn colour.”

“How will mamma take it?” thought Marcella anxiously.  “There is not a word of papa!”

When she entered the drawing-room, she caught her mother standing absently at the tea-table.  The little silver caddy was still in her hand as though she had forgotten to put it down; and her eyes, which evidently saw nothing, were turned to the window, the brows frowning.  The look of suffering for an instant was unmistakable; then she started at the sound of Marcella’s step, and put down 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?”