f. She had spent
an all but sleepless night, tormented by Marcella's claim upon her.
After twenty years of self-suppression this woman of forty-five,
naturally able, original, and independent, had seen a glimpse of
liberty. In her first youth she had been betrayed as a wife, degraded as
a member of society. A passion she could not kill, combined with some
stoical sense of inalienable obligation, had combined to make her both
the slave and guardian of her husband up to middle life; and her family
and personal pride, so strong in her as a girl, had found its only
outlet in this singular estrangement she had achieved between herself
and every other living being, including her own daughter. Now her
husband was dead, and all sorts of crushed powers and desires, mostly of
the intellectual sort, had been strangely reviving within her. Just
emerged, as she was, from the long gloom of nursing, she already wished
to throw it all behind her--to travel, to read, to make
acquaintances--she who had lived as a recluse for twenty years! There
was in it a last clutch at youth, at life. And she had no desire to
enter upon this new existence--in comradeship with Marcella. They were
independent and very different human beings. That they were mother and
daughter was a mere physical accident.

Moreover, though she was amply conscious of the fine development in
Marcella during the past two years, it is probable that she felt her
daughter even less congenial to her now than of old. For the rich,
emotional nature had, as we have seen, "suffered conviction," had turned
in the broad sense to "religion," was more and more sensitive,
especially since Hallin's death, to the spiritual things and symbols in
the world. At Naples she had haunted churches; had read, as her mother
knew, many religious books.

Now Mrs. Boyce in these matters had a curious history. She had begun
life as an ardent Christian, under evangelical influences. Her husband,
on the other hand, at the time she married him was a man of purely
sceptical opinions, a superficial disciple of Mill and Comte, and fond
of an easy profanity which seemed to place him indisputably with the
superior persons of this world. To the amazement and scandal of her
friends, Evelyn Merritt had not been three months his wife before she
had adopted his opinions _en bloc_, and was carrying them out to their
logical ends with a sincerity and devotion quite unknown to her teacher.
Thenceforward her concepti