"Oh, I don't think you will hate your circumstances, my dear! You would be very foolish if you did. Have you heard finally how much the settlement is to be?"
"No," said Marcella, shortly. "I have not asked papa, nor anybody."
"It was only settled this morning. Your father told me hurriedly as he went out. You are to have two thousand a year of your own."
The tone was dry, and the speaker's look as she turned towards her daughter had in it a curious hostility; but Marcella did not notice her mother's manner.
"It is too much," she said in a low voice.
She had thrown back her head against the chair in which she sat, and her half-troubled eyes were wandering over the darkening expanse of lawn and avenue.
"He said he wished you to feel perfectly free to live your own life, and to follow out your own projects. Oh, for a person of projects, my dear, it is not so much. You will do well to husband it. Keep it for yourself. Get what you want out of it: not what other people want."
Again Marcella's attention missed the note of agitation in her mother's sharp manner. A soft look—a look of compunction—passed across her face. Mrs. Boyce began to put her working things away, finding it too dark to do any more.
"By the way," said the mother, suddenly, "I suppose you will be going over to help him in his canvassing this next few weeks? Your father says the election will be certainly in February."
Marcella moved uneasily.