MARCELLA by MRS. HUMPHRY WARD Author of _Robert Elsmere_, _The History Of David Grieve_, etc. In Two Volumes 1894 [Illustration: Portrait of Mary A. Ward] TO MY FATHER I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE BOOK I. "If nature put not forth her power About the opening of the flower, Who is it that could live an hour?" CHAPTER I. "The mists--and the sun--and the first streaks of yellow in the beeches--beautiful!--_beautiful_!" And with a long breath of delight Marcella Boyce threw herself on her knees by the window she had just opened, and, propping her face upon her hands, devoured the scene, before her with that passionate intensity of pleasure which had been her gift and heritage through life. She looked out upon a broad and level lawn, smoothed by the care of centuries, flanked on either side by groups of old trees--some Scotch firs, some beeches, a cedar or two--groups where the slow selective hand of time had been at work for generations, developing here the delightful roundness of quiet mass and shade, and there the bold caprice of bare fir trunks and ragged branches, standing black against the sky. Beyond the lawn stretched a green descent indefinitely long, carrying the eye indeed almost to the limit of the view, and becoming from the lawn onwards a wide irregular avenue, bordered by beeches of a splendid maturity, ending at last in a far distant gap where a gate--and a gate of some importance--clearly should have been, yet was not. The size of the trees, the wide uplands of the falling valley to the left of the avenue, now rich in the tints of harvest, the autumn sun pouring steadily through the vanishing mists, the green breadth of the vast lawn, the unbroken peace of wood and cultivated ground, all carried with them a confused general impression of well-being and of dignity. Marcella drew it in--this impression--with avidity. Yet at the same moment she noticed involuntarily the gateless gap at the end of the avenue, the choked condition of the garden paths on either side of the lawn, and the unsightly tufts of grass spotting the broad gravel terrace beneath her window. "It _is_ a heavenly place, all said and done," she protested to herself with a little frown. "But no doubt it would have been better still if Uncle Robert had looked after it and we could afford to keep the garden decent. Still--" She dropped on a stool beside the open window, and as her eyes steeped themselves afresh in what they saw, the frown disappeared again in the former look of glowing content--that content of youth which is never merely passive, nay, rather, contains an invariable element of covetous eagerness.