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.