And again her keen glance disconcerted the tall handsome girl, whose power over the world about her had never extended to her mother.  Marcella flushed and played with the fire.

“You see, mamma,” she said after a moment, still looking at the logs and the shower of sparks they made as she moved them about, “you never let me discuss them with you.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Mrs. Boyce, quickly; then, after a pause:  “You will find your own line in a little while, Marcella, and you will see, if you so choose it, that there will be nothing unsurmountable in your way.  One piece of advice let me give you.  Don’t be too grateful to Miss Raeburn, or anybody else!  You take great interest in your Boyce belongings, I perceive.  You may remember too, perhaps, that there is other blood in you—­and that no Merritt has ever submitted quietly to either patronage or pity.”

Marcella started.  Her mother had never named her own kindred to her before that she could remember.  She had known for many years that there was a breach between the Merritts and themselves.  The newspapers had told her something at intervals of her Merritt relations, for they were fashionable and important folk, but no one of them had crossed the Boyces’ threshold since the old London days, wherein Marcella could still dimly remember the tall forms of certain Merritt uncles, and even a stately lady in a white cap whom she knew to have been her mother’s mother.  The stately lady had died while she was still a child at her first school; she could recollect her own mourning frock; but that was almost the last personal remembrance she had, connected with the Merritts.

And now this note of intense personal and family pride, under which Mrs. Boyce’s voice had for the first time quivered a little!  Marcella had never heard it before, and it thrilled her.  She sat on by the fire, drinking her tea and every now and then watching her companion with a new and painful curiosity.  The tacit assumption of many years with her had been that her mother was a dry limited person, clever and determined in small ways, that affected her own family, but on the whole characterless as compared with other people of strong feelings and responsive susceptibilities.  But her own character had been rapidly maturing of late, and her insight sharpening.  During these recent weeks of close contact, her mother’s singularity had risen in her mind to the dignity at least of a problem, an enigma.

Presently Mrs. Boyce rose and put the scones down by the fire.

“Your father will be in, I suppose.  Yes, I hear the front door.”