“You are quite capable of it, my dear,” said Miss Raeburn, kissing her.  “We know you!  Miss Boyce—­Lady Winterbourne.”

Lady Winterbourne shook hands with a shy awkwardness which belied her height and stateliness.  As she sat down beside Miss Raeburn the contrast between her and Lord Maxwell’s sister was sufficiently striking.  Miss Raeburn was short, inclined to be stout, and to a certain gay profusion in her attire.  Her cap was made of a bright silk handkerchief edged with lace; round her neck were hung a number of small trinkets on various gold chains; she abounded too in bracelets, most of which were clearly old-fashioned mementos of departed relatives or friends.  Her dress was a cheerful red verging on crimson; and her general air suggested energy, bustle, and a good-humoured common sense.

Lady Winterbourne, on the other hand, was not only dressed from head to foot in severe black without an ornament; her head and face belonged also to the same impression, as of some strong and forcible study in black and white.  The attitude was rigidly erect; the very dark eyes, under the snowy and abundant hair, had a trick of absent staring; in certain aspects the whole figure had a tragic, nay, formidable dignity, from which one expected, and sometimes got, the tone and gesture of tragic acting.  Yet at the same time, mixed in therewith, a curious strain of womanish, nay childish, weakness, appealingness.  Altogether, a great lady, and a personality—­yet something else too—­something ill-assured, timid, incongruous—­hard to be defined.

“I believe you have not been at Mellor long?” the new-comer asked, in a deep contralto voice which she dragged a little.

“About seven weeks.  My father and mother have been there since May.”

“You must of course think it a very interesting old place?”

“Of course I do; I love it,” said Marcella, disconcerted by the odd habit Lady Winterbourne had of fixing her eyes upon a person, and then, as it were, forgetting what she had done with them.

“Oh, I haven’t been there, Agneta,” said the new-comer, turning after a pause to Miss Raeburn, “since that summer—­you remember that party when the Palmerstons came over—­so long ago—­twenty years!”

Marcella sat stiffly upright.  Lady Winterbourne grew a little nervous and flurried.

“I don’t think I ever saw your mother, Miss Boyce—­I was much away from home about then.  Oh, yes, I did once—­”

The speaker stopped, a sudden red suffusing her pale cheeks.  She had felt certain somehow, at sight of Marcella, that she should say or do something untoward, and she had promptly justified her own prevision.  The only time she had ever seen Mrs. Boyce had been in court, on the last day of the famous trial in which Richard Boyce was concerned, when she had made out the wife sitting closely veiled as near to her husband as possible, waiting for the verdict.  As she had already confided this reminiscence to Miss Raeburn, and had forgotten she had done so, both ladies had a moment of embarrassment.