hough I were not your
daughter--not your child at all, but a stranger?"

It was a cry of anguish. A sudden slight tremor swept over Mrs. Boyce's
thin and withered face. She braced herself to the inevitable.

"Don't let us make a tragedy of it, my dear," she said, with a light
touch on Marcella's hands. "Let us discuss it reasonably. Won't you sit
down? I am not proposing anything very dreadful. But, like you, I have
some interests of my own, and I should be glad to follow them--now--a
little. I wish to spend some of the year in London; to make that,
perhaps, my headquarters, so as to see something of some old friends
whom I have had no intercourse with for years--perhaps also of my
relations." She spoke of them with a particular dryness. "And I should
be glad--after this long time--to be somewhat taken out of oneself, to
read, to hear what is going on, to feed one's mind a little."

Marcella, looking at her, saw a kind of feverish light, a sparkling
intensity in the pale blue eyes, that filled her with amazement. What,
after all, did she know of this strange individuality from which her own
being had taken its rise? The same flesh and blood--what an irony of
nature!

"Of course," continued Mrs. Boyce, "I should go to you, and you would
come to me. It would only be for part of the year. Probably we should
get more from each other's lives so. As you know, I long to see things
as they are, not conventionally. Anyway, whether I were there or no, you
would probably want some companion to help you in your work and plans. I
am not fit for them. And it would be easy to find some one who could act
as chaperon in my absence."

The hot tears sprang to Marcella's eyes. "Why did you send me away from
you, mamma, all my childhood," she cried. "It was wrong--cruel. I have
no brother or sister. And you put me out of your life when I had no
choice, when I was too young to understand."

Mrs. Boyce winced, but made no reply. She sat with her delicate hand
across her brow. She was the white shadow of her former self; but her
fragility had always seemed to Marcella more indomitable than anybody
else's strength.

Sobs began to rise in Marcella's throat.

"And now," she said, in half-coherent despair, "do you know what you are
doing? You are cutting yourself off from me--refusing to have any real
bond to me just when I want it most. I suppose you think that I shall be
satisfied with the property and the power, and the chance of doing