You have certainly taken us all in hand, Marcella!" Marcella felt an instant's fear--fear of the ironic power in the sparkling look so keenly fixed on her offending self; she shrank before the proud reserve expressed in every line of her mother's fragile imperious beauty.

Then a cry of nature broke from the girl.
"You have got used to it, mamma! I feel as if it would kill me to live here, shut off from everybody--joining with nobody--with no friendly feelings or society.

It was bad enough in the old lodging-house days; but here--why _should_ we ?" Mrs.Boyce had certainly grown pale.
"I supposed you would ask sooner or later," she said in a low determined voice, with what to Marcella was a quite new note of reality in it.
"Probably Mr.Raeburn told you--but you must of course have guessed it long ago--that society does not look kindly on us--and has its reasons.
I do not deny in the least that it has its reasons.

I do not accuse anybody, and resent nothing.

But the question with me has always been, Shall I accept pity?
I have always been able to meet it with a No! You are very different from me--but for you also I believe it would be the happiest answer." The eyes of both met--the mother's full of an indomitable fire which had for once wholly swept away her satiric calm of every day; the daughter's troubled and miserable.
"I want friends!" said Marcella, slowly.