society whose portrait in the window of the little stationer's shop at
Marswell--the small country town near Cliff House--had attracted the
child's attention once, on a dreary walk, and had ever since governed
her dreams. Marcella had no fairy-tales, but she spun a whole cycle for
herself around the lovely Princess who came to seem to her before long
her own particular property. She had only to shut her eyes and she had
caught her idol's attention--either by some look or act of passionate
yet unobtrusive homage as she passed the royal carriage in the
street--or by throwing herself in front of the divinity's runaway
horses--or by a series of social steps easily devised by an imaginative
child, well aware, in spite of appearances, that she was of an old
family and had aristocratic relations. Then, when the Princess had held
out a gracious hand and smiled, all was delight! Marcella grew up on the
instant: she was beautiful, of course; she had, so people said, the
"Boyce eyes and hair;" she had sweeping gowns, generally of white muslin
with cherry-coloured ribbons; she went here and there with the Princess,
laughing and talking quite calmly with the greatest people in the land,
her romantic friendship with the adored of England making her all the
time the observed of all observers, bringing her a thousand delicate
flatteries and attentions.

Then, when she was at the very top of ecstasy, floating in the softest
summer sea of fancy, some little noise would startle her into opening
her eyes, and there beside her in the deepening dusk would be the bare
white beds of her two dormitory companions, the ugly wall-paper
opposite, and the uncovered boards with their frugal strips of carpet
stretching away on either hand. The tea-bell would ring perhaps in the
depths far below, and the sound would complete the transformation of
the Princess's maid-of-honour into Marcie Boyce, the plain naughty
child, whom nobody cared about, whose mother never wrote to her, who in