"Well, we shall give twelve to fourteen shillings a week wages. We shall find the materials, and the room--and prices are very low, the whole trade depressed."

Mrs. Boyce laughed.

"I see. How many workers do you expect to get together?"

"Oh! eventually, about two hundred in the three villages. It will regenerate the whole life!" said Marcella, a sudden ray from the inner warmth escaping her, against her will.

Mrs. Boyce smiled again, and turned her work so as to see it better.

"Does Aldous understand what you are letting him in for?"

Marcella flushed.

"Perfectly. It is 'ransom'--that's all."

"And he is ready to take your view of it?"

"Oh, he thinks us economically unsound, of course," said Marcella, impatiently. "So we are. All care for the human being under the present state of things is economically unsound. But he likes it no more than I do."

"Well, lucky for you he has a long purse," said Mrs. Boyce, lightly.

"But I gather, Marcella, you don't insist upon his spending it _all_ on straw-plaiting. He told me yesterday he had taken the Hertford Street house."

"We shall live quite simply," said Marcella, quickly.

"What, no carriage?"

Marcella hesitated.

"A carriage saves time. And if one goes about much, it does not cost so much more than cabs."

"So you mean to go about much? Lady Winterbourne talks to me of presenting you in May."

"That's Miss Raeburn," cried Marcella. "She says I must, and all the family would be scandalised if I didn't go. But you can't imagine--"

She stopped and took off her hat, pushing the hair back from her forehead. A look of worry and excitement had replaced the radiant glow of her first resting moments.

"That you like it?" said Mrs. Boyce, bluntly. "Well, I don't know. Most young women like pretty gowns, and great functions, and prominent positions. I don't call you an ascetic, Marcella."

Marcella winced.

"One has to fit oneself to circ.u.mstances," she said proudly. "One may hate the circ.u.mstances, but one can't escape them."

"Oh, I don't think you will hate your circ.u.mstances, my dear! You would be very foolish if you did. Have you heard finally how much the settlement is to be?"

"No," said Marcella, shortly. "I have not asked papa, nor anybody."

"It was only settled this morning. Your father told me hurriedly as he went out. You are to have two thousand a year of your own."

The tone was dry, and the speaker's look as she turned towards her daughter had in it a curious hostility; but Marcella did not notice her mother's manner.

"It is too much," she said in a low voice.

She had thrown back her head against the chair in which she sat, and her half-troubled eyes were wandering over the darkening expanse of lawn and avenue.

"He said he wished you to feel perfectly free to live your own life, and to follow out your own projects. Oh, for a person of projects, my dear, it is not so much. You will do well to husband it. Keep it for yourself.

Get what _you_ want out of it: not what other people want."

Again Marcella's attention missed the note of agitation in her mother's sharp manner. A soft look--a look of compunction--pa.s.sed across her face. Mrs. Boyce began to put her working things away, finding it too dark to do any more.

"By the way," said the mother, suddenly, "I suppose you will be going over to help him in his canva.s.sing this next few weeks? Your father says the election will be certainly in February."

Marcella moved uneasily.

"He knows," she said at last, "that I don't agree with him in so many things. He is so full of this Peasant Proprietors Bill. And I hate peasant properties. They are nothing but a step backwards."

Mrs. Boyce lifted her eyebrows.

"That's unlucky. He tells me it is likely to be his chief work in the new Parliament. Isn't it, on the whole, probable that he knows more about the country than you do, Marcella?"

Marcella sat up with sudden energy and gathered her walking things together.

"It isn't knowledge that's the question, mamma; it's the principle of the thing. I mayn't know anything, but the people whom I follow know.

There are the two sides of thought--the two ways of looking at things. I warned Aldous when he asked me to marry him which I belonged to. And he accepted it."

Mrs. Boyce's thin fine mouth curled a little.

"So you suppose that Aldous had his wits about him on that great occasion as much as you had?"

Marcella first started, then quivered with nervous indignation.

"Mother," she said, "I can't bear it. It's not the first time that you have talked as though I had taken some unfair advantage--made an unworthy bargain. It is too hard too. Other people may think what they like, but that you--"

Her voice failed her, and the tears came into her eyes. She was tired and over-excited, and the contrast between the atmosphere of flattery and consideration which surrounded her in Aldous's company, in the village, or at the Winterbournes, and this tone which her mother so often took with her when they were alone, was at the moment hardly to be endured.

Mrs. Boyce looked up more gravely.

"You misunderstand me, my dear," she said quietly. "I allow myself to wonder at you a little, but I think no hard things of you ever. I believe you like Aldous."

"Really, mamma!" cried Marcella, half hysterically.

Mrs. Boyce had by now rolled up her work and shut her workbasket.

"If you are going to take off your things," she said, "please tell William that there will be six or seven at tea. You said, I think, that Mr. Raeburn was going to bring Mr. Hallin?"

"Yes, and Frank Leven is coming. When will Mr. Wharton be here?"

"Oh, in ten minutes or so, if his train is punctual. I hear your father just coming in."