ween the poor and the rich--and our tyranny--and its being
hopeless--and the poor always hating us--I thought you changed."

And forgetting Lady Selina, remembering only the old talks at Mellor,
Lady Winterbourne bent forward and laid an appealing hand on Marcella's
arm.

Marcella turned to her with an odd look.

"If you only knew," she said, "how much more possible it is to think
well of the rich, when you are living amongst the poor!"

"Ah! you must be at a distance from us to do us justice?" enquired Lady
Selina, settling her bracelets with a sarcastic lip.

"_I_ must," said Marcella, looking, however, not at her, but at Lady
Winterbourne. "But then, you see,"--she caressed her friend's hand with
a smile--"it is so easy to throw some people into opposition!"

"Dreadfully easy!" sighed Lady Winterbourne.

The flush mounted again in the girl's cheek. She hesitated, then felt
driven to explanations.

"You see--oddly enough"--she pointed away for an instant to the
north-east through the open window--"it's when I'm over there--among the
people who have nothing--that it does me good to remember that there
are persons who live in James Street, Buckingham Gate!"

"My dear! I don't understand," said Lady Winterbourne, studying her with
her most perplexed and tragic air.

"Well, isn't it simple?" said Marcella, still holding her hand and
looking up at her. "It comes, I suppose, of going about all day in those
streets and houses, among people who live in one room--with not a bit of
prettiness anywhere--and no place to be alone in, or to rest in. I come
home and _gloat_ over all the beautiful dresses and houses and gardens I
can think of!"

"But don't you _hate_ the people that have them?" said Betty, again on
her stool, chin in hand.

"No! it doesn't seem to matter to me then what kind of people they are.
And I don't so much want to take from them and give to the others. I
only want to be sure that the beauty, and the leisure, and the freshness
are _some_where--not lost out of the world."

"How strange!--in a life like yours--that one should think so much of
the _ugliness_ of being poor--more than of suffering or pain," said
Betty, musing.

"Well--in some moods--you do--_I_ do!" said Marcella; "and it is in
those moods that I feel least resentful of wealth. If I say to myself
that the people who have all the beauty and the leisure are often
selfish and cruel--after all they die out of their houses and their
pa