She energetically decided that the time had come for her to demand the
truth. Yet, of whom? Marcella knew very well that to force her mother to
any line of action Mrs. Boyce was unwilling to follow, was beyond her
power. And it was not easy to go to her father directly and say, "Tell
me exactly how and why it is that society has turned its back upon you."
All the same, it _was_ due to them all, due to herself especially, now
that she was grown up and at home, that she should not be kept in the
dark any longer like a baby, that she should be put in possession of the
facts which, after all, threatened to stand here at Mellor Park, as
untowardly in their, in _her_ way, as they had done in the shabby school
and lodging-house existence of all those bygone years.

Perhaps the secret of her impatience was that she did not, and could
not, believe that the facts, if faced, would turn out to be
insurmountable. Her instinct told her as she looked back that their
relation toward society in the past, though full of discomforts and
humiliations, had not been the relation of outcasts. Their poverty and
the shifts to which poverty drives people had brought them the
disrespect of one class; and as to the acquaintances and friends of
their own rank, what had been mainly shown them had been a sort of cool
distaste for their company, an insulting readiness to forget the
existence of people who had so to speak lost their social bloom, and
laid themselves open to the contemptuous disapproval or pity of the
world. Everybody, it seemed, knew their affairs, and knowing them saw no
personal advantage and distinction in the Boyces' acquaintance, but
rather the contrary.

As she put the facts together a little, she realised, however, that the
breach had always been deepest between her father and his relations, or
his oldest friends. A little shiver passed through her as she reflected
that here, in his own country, where his history was best known, the
feeling towards him, whatever it rested upon, might very probably be
strongest. Well, it _was_ hard upon them!--hard upon her mother--hard
upon her. In her first ecstasy over the old ancestral house and the
dignities of her new position, how little she had thought of these
things! And there they were all the time--dogging and thwarting.

She walked slowly along, with her burden of flowers, through a laurel
path which led straight to the drive, and so, across it, to the little
church. The church s