Nothing appeased, Lady Leven chattered away, while Letty watched her hostess in silence. She had come down to the Court gloating somewhat, in spite of her very real unhappiness, over the prospect of the riches and magnificence she was to find there. And to discover that wealth might be merely the source of one long moral wrestle to the people who possessed it, burdening them with all sorts of problems and remorses that others escaped, had been a strange and, on the whole, jarring experience to her. Of course there must be rich and poor; of course there must be servants and masters. Marcella's rebellion against the barriers of life had been a sort of fatigue and offence to Letty ever since she had been made to feel it. And daily contact with the simple, and even Spartan, ways of living that prevailed--for the owners of it, at least--in the vast house, with the overflowing energy and humanity that often made its mistress a restless companion, and led her into a fair percentage of mistakes--had roused a score of half-scornful protests in the small, shrewd mind of her guest. Nevertheless, when Marcella was kind, when she put Letty on the sofa, insisting that she was tired, and anxiously accusing herself of some lack of consideration or other; when she took her to her room at night, seeing to every comfort, and taking thought for luxuries that in her heart she despised; or when, very rarely, and turning rather pale, she said a few words--sweet, hopeful, encouraging--about George's return, then Letty was conscious of a strange leap of something till then unknown, something that made her want to sob, that seemed to open to her a new room in the House of Life. Marcella had not kissed her since the day of their great scene; they had been "Lady Maxwell" and "Lady Tressady" to each other all the time, and Letty had but realised her own insolences and audacities the more, as gradually the spiritual dignity of the woman she had raved at came home to her. But sometimes when Marcella stood beside her, unconscious, talking pleasantly of London folk or Ancoats, or trying to inform herself as to Letty's life at Ferth, a half-desolate intuition would flash across the younger woman of what it might be to be admitted to the intimate friendship of such a nature, to feel those long, slender arms pressed about her once more, not in pity or remonstrance, as of one trying to exorcise an evil spirit, but in mere love, as of one asking as well as giving. The tender and adoring friendship of women for women, which has become so marked a feature of our self-realising generation, had passed Letty by. She had never known it. Now, in these unforeseen circumstances, she seemed to be trembling within reach of its emotion; divining it, desiring it, yet forced onward to the question, "What is there in me that may claim it?"