"Of course," continued Mrs. Boyce, "I should go to you, and you would come to me. It would only be for part of the year. Probably we should get more from each other's lives so. As you know, I long to see things as they are, not conventionally. Anyway, whether I were there or no, you would probably want some companion to help you in your work and plans. I am not fit for them. And it would be easy to find some one who could act as chaperon in my absence."
The hot tears sprang to Marcella's eyes. "Why did you send me away from you, mamma, all my childhood," she cried. "It was wrong—cruel. I have no brother or sister. And you put me out of your life when I had no choice, when I was too young to understand."
Mrs. Boyce winced, but made no reply. She sat with her delicate hand across her brow. She was the white shadow of her former self; but her fragility had always seemed to Marcella more indomitable than anybody else's strength.
Sobs began to rise in Marcella's throat.
"And now," she said, in half-coherent despair, "do you know what you are doing? You are cutting yourself off from me—refusing to have any real bond to me just when I want it most. I suppose you think that I shall be satisfied with the property and the power, and the chance of doing what I like. But"—she tried her best to gulp back her pain, her outraged feeling, to speak quietly—"I am not like that really any more. I can take it all up, with courage and heart, if you will stay with me, and let me—let me—love you and care for you. But, by myself, I feel as if I could not face it! I am not likely to be happy—for a long time—except in doing what work I can. It is very improbable that I shall marry. I dare say you don't believe me, but it is true. We are both sad and lonely. We have no one but each other. And then you talk in this ghastly way of separating from me—casting me off."
Her voice trembled and broke, she looked at her mother with a frowning passion.
Mrs. Boyce still sat silent, studying her daughter with a strange, brooding eye. Under her unnatural composure there was in reality a half-mad impatience, the result of physical and moral reaction. This beauty, this youth, talk of sadness, of finality! What folly! Still, she was stirred, undermined in spite of herself.
"There!" she said, with a restless gesture, "let us, please, talk of it no more. I will come back with you—I will do my best. We will let the matter of my future settlement alone for some months, at any rate, if that will satisfy you or be any help to you."
She made a movement as though to rise from her low chair. But the great waters swelled in Marcella—swelled and broke. She fell on her knees again by her mother, and before Mrs. Boyce could stop her she had thrown her young arms close round the thin, shrunken form.
"Mother!" she said. "Mother, be good to me—love me—you are all I have!"