"He knows," she said at last, "that I don't agree with him in so many things. He is so full of this Peasant Proprietors Bill. And I hate peasant properties. They are nothing but a step backwards."
Mrs. Boyce lifted her eyebrows.
"That's unlucky. He tells me it is likely to be his chief work in the new Parliament. Isn't it, on the whole, probable that he knows more about the country than you do, Marcella?"
Marcella sat up with sudden energy and gathered her walking things together.
"It isn't knowledge that's the question, mamma; it's the principle of the thing. I mayn't know anything, but the people whom I follow know. There are the two sides of thought—the two ways of looking at things. I warned Aldous when he asked me to marry him which I belonged to. And he accepted it."
Mrs. Boyce's thin fine mouth curled a little.
"So you suppose that Aldous had his wits about him on that great occasion as much as you had?"
Marcella first started, then quivered with nervous indignation.
"Mother," she said, "I can't bear it. It's not the first time that you have talked as though I had taken some unfair advantage—made an unworthy bargain. It is too hard too. Other people may think what they like, but that you—"
Her voice failed her, and the tears came into her eyes. She was tired and over-excited, and the contrast between the atmosphere of flattery and consideration which surrounded her in Aldous's company, in the village, or at the Winterbournes, and this tone which her mother so often took with her when they were alone, was at the moment hardly to be endured.