Mrs.Boyce found herself becoming more of a _chaperon_ than she had ever yet professed to be; and Miss Raeburn, as we have said, made repeated efforts to capture Marcella and hold her for Aldous, her lawful master.
But Marcella proved extremely difficult to manage.

In the first place she was a young person of many engagements.

Her village scheme absorbed a great deal of time.

She was deep in a varied correspondence, in the engagement of teachers, the provision of work-rooms, the collecting and registering of workers, the organisation of local committees and so forth.

New sides of the girl's character, new capacities and capabilities were coming out; new forms of her natural power over her fellows were developing every day; she was beginning, under the incessant stimulus of Wharton's talk, to read and think on social and economic subjects, with some system and coherence, and it was evident that she took a passionate mental pleasure in it all.