To take the adoration first.  When Marcella came to Cliff House she was recommended by the same relation who gave her “Marmion” to the kind offices of the clergyman of the parish, who happened to be known to some of the Boyce family.  He and his wife—­they had no children—­did their duty amply by the odd undisciplined child.  They asked her to tea once or twice; they invited her to the school-treat, where she was only self-conscious and miserably shy; and Mr. Ellerton had at least one friendly and pastoral talk with Miss Frederick as to the difficulties of her pupil’s character.  For a long time little came of it.  Marcella was hard to tame, and when she went to tea at the Rectory Mrs. Ellerton, who was refined and sensible, did not know what to make of her, though in some unaccountable way she was drawn to and interested by the child.  But with the expansion of her thirteenth year there suddenly developed in Marcie’s stormy breast an overmastering absorbing passion for these two persons.  She did not show it to them much, but for herself it raised her to another plane of existence, gave her new objects and new standards.  She who had hated going to church now counted time entirely by Sundays.  To see the pulpit occupied by any other form and face than those of the rector was a calamity hardly to be borne; if the exit of the school party were delayed by any accident so that Mr. and Mrs. Ellerton overtook them in the churchyard, Marcella would walk home on air, quivering with a passionate delight, and in the dreary afternoon of the school Sunday she would spend her time happily in trying to write down the heads of Mr. Ellerton’s sermon.  In the natural course of things she would, at this time, have taken no interest in such things at all, but whatever had been spoken by him had grace, thrill, meaning.

Nor was the week quite barren of similar delights.  She was generally sent to practise on an old square piano in one of the top rooms.  The window in front of her overlooked the long white drive and the distant high road into which it ran.  Three times a week on an average Mrs. Ellerton’s pony carriage might be expected to pass along that road.  Every day Marcella watched for it, alive with expectation, her fingers strumming as they pleased.  Then with the first gleam of the white pony in the distance, over would go the music stool, and the child leapt to the window, remaining fixed there, breathing quick and eagerly till the trees on the left had hidden from her the graceful erect figure of Mrs. Ellerton.  Then her moment of Paradise was over; but the afterglow of it lasted for the day.