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 wife remarked shortly, when
he complained to her, that Marcella seemed to her as well off as the
daughter of persons of their means could expect to be. But Mr. Boyce