But under the condition of two gardeners to ten acres of garden, nature does very much as she pleases, and Mr.Boyce when he came that way grumbled in vain.
As for Marcella, she was alternately moved to revolt and tenderness by the ragged charm of the old place.
On the one hand, it angered her that anything so plainly meant for beauty and dignity should go so neglected and unkempt.

On the other, if house and gardens had been spick and span like the other houses of the neighbourhood, if there had been sound roofs, a modern water-supply, shutters, greenhouses, and weedless paths,--in short, the general self-complacent air of a well-kept country house,--where would have been that thrilling intimate appeal, as for something forlornly lovely, which the old place so constantly made upon her?
It seemed to depend even upon _her_, the latest born of all its children--to ask for tendance and cherishing even from _her_.

She was always planning how--with a minimum of money to spend--it could be comforted and healed, and in the planning had grown in these few weeks to love it as though she had been bred there.
But this morning Marcella picked her roses and sunflowers in tumult and depression of spirit.

What _was_ this past which in these new surroundings was like some vainly fled tyrant clutching at them again?
She energetically decided that the time had come for her to demand the truth.

Yet, of whom?
Marcella knew very well that to force her mother to any line of action Mrs.Boyce was unwilling to follow, was beyond her power.