"I believe so--I have always heard so," said her companion, flushing still redder.
"You knew Uncle Robert--Lord Maxwell did?"
"Yes--as much as anybody knew him--but--"
"Oh, I know: he shut himself up and hated his neighbours. Still you knew him, and papa and your father were boys together. Well then, if you won't mind telling me--I know it's bold to ask, but I have reasons--why does Lord Maxwell write to papa in the third person, and why has your aunt, Miss Raeburn, never found time in all these weeks to call on mamma?"
She turned and faced him, her splendid eyes one challenge. The glow and fire of the whole gesture--the daring of it, and yet the suggestion of womanish weakness in the hand which trembled against her dress and in the twitching lip--if it had been fine acting, it could not have been more complete. And, in a sense, acting there was in it. Marcella's emotions were real, but her mind seldom deserted her. One half of her was impulsive and passionate; the other half looked on and put in finishing touches.
Acting or no, the surprise of her outburst swept the man beside her off his feet. He found himself floundering in a sea of excuses--not for his relations, but for himself. He ought never to have intruded; it was odious, unpardonable; he had no business whatever to put himself in her way! Would she please understand that it was an accident? It should not happen again. He quite understood that she could not regard him with friendliness. And so on. He had never so lost his self-possession.
Meanwhile Marcella's brows contracted. She took his excuses as a fresh offence.
"You mean, I suppose, that I have no right to ask such questions!" she cried; "that I am not behaving like a lady--as one of your relations would? Well, I dare say! I was not brought up like that. I was not brought up at all; I have had to make myself. So you must avoid me if you like. Of course you will. But I resolved there--in the church--that I would make just one effort, before everything crystallises, to break through. If we must live on here hating our neighbours and being cut by them, I thought I would just ask you why, first. There is no one else to ask. Hardly anybody has called, except the Hardens, and a few new people that don't matter. And _I_ have nothing to be ashamed of," said the girl passionately, "nor has mamma. Papa, I suppose, did some bad things long ago. I have never known--I don't know now--what they were. But I should like to understand. Is everybody going to cut us because of that?"