Marcella | Page 6

fire, her pale friend in a
shawl crouching over the warmth, and the branches of a snowberry tree,
driven by the wind, beating against the terrace door.
But what a story-teller was Mary Lant! She was the inventor of a story
called "John and Julia," which went on for weeks and months without
ever producing the smallest satiety in Marcella. Unlike her books of
adventure, this was a domestic drama of the purest sort; it was
extremely moral and evangelical, designed indeed by its sensitively
religious author for Marcie's correction and improvement. There was in
it a sublime hero, who set everybody's faults to rights and lectured the
heroine. In real life Marcella would probably before long have been
found trying to kick his shins--a mode of warfare of which in her
demon moods she was past mistress. But as Mary Lant described him,
she not only bore with and trembled before him--she adored him. The
taste for him and his like, as well as for the story-teller herself--a girl of
a tremulous, melancholy fibre, sweet-natured, possessed by a Calvinist
faith, and already prescient of death--grew upon her. Soon her
absorbing desire was to be altogether shut up with Mary, except on
Sundays and at practising times. For this purpose she gave herself the
worst cold she could achieve, and cherished diligently what she
proudly considered to be a racking cough. But Miss Frederick was deaf
to the latter, and only threatened the usual upstairs seclusion and
senna-tea for the former, whereupon Marcella in alarm declared that
her cold was much better and gave up the cough in despair. It was her
first sorrow and cost her some days of pale brooding and silence, and
some nights of stifled tears, when during an Easter holiday a letter from
Miss Frederick to her mother announced the sudden death of Mary
Lant.

CHAPTER II
.

Friendship and love are humanising things, and by her fourteenth year
Marcella was no longer a clever little imp, but a fast-maturing and in
some ways remarkable girl, with much of the woman in her already.
She had begun even to feel an interest in her dress, to speculate
occasionally on her appearance. At the fourth breaking-up party after
her arrival at Cliff House, Marcella, who had usually figured on these
occasions in a linsey-woolsey high to the throat, amid the frilled and
sashed splendours of her companions, found lying on her bed, when
she went up with the others to dress, a plain white muslin dress with
blue ribbons. It was the gift of old Mademoiselle Rénier, who
affectionately wished her queer, neglected favourite to look well.
Marcella examined it and fingered it with an excited mixture of feelings.
First of all there was the sore and swelling bitterness that she should
owe such things to the kindness of the French governess, whereas
finery for the occasion had been freely sent to all the other girls from
"home." She very nearly turned her back upon the bed and its pretty
burden. But then the mere snowy whiteness of the muslin and freshness
of the ribbons, and the burning curiosity to see herself decked therein,
overcame a nature which, in the midst of its penury, had been always
really possessed by a more than common hunger for sensuous beauty
and seemliness. Marcella wore it, was stormily happy in it, and kissed
Mademoiselle Rénier for it at night with an effusion, nay, some tears,
which no one at Cliff House had ever witnessed in her before except
with the accompaniments of rage and fury.
A little later her father came to see her, the first and only visit he paid
to her at school. Marcella, to whom he was by now almost a stranger,
received him demurely, making no confidences, and took him over the
house and gardens. When he was about to leave her a sudden upswell
of paternal sentiment made him ask her if she was happy and if she
wanted anything.
"Yes!" said Marcella, her large eyes gleaming; "tell mamma I want a
'fringe.' Every other girl in the school has got one."
And she pointed disdainfully to her plainly parted hair. Her father,
astonished by her unexpected vehemence, put up his eyeglass and
studied the child's appearance. Three days later, by her mother's
permission, Marcella was taken to the hairdresser at Marswell by
Mademoiselle Rénier, returned in all the glories of a "fringe," and, in

acknowledgment thereof, wrote her mother a letter which for the first
time had something else than formal news in it.
Meanwhile new destinies were preparing for her. For a variety of small
reasons Mr. Boyce, who had never yet troubled himself about the
matter from a distance, was not, upon personal inspection, very
favourably struck with his daughter's surroundings. His