WRECKED IN PORT,

A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

CHAPTER X. AN INTERIOR.

MARIAN ASHURST had begun, soon after
their parting, to feel that she had been
somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations
of the immediate success of Walter Joyce.
Each little difficulty she had had to
encounter in her own life until the old home
was left behind had aided to depress her,
to force her to understand that the battle
of life was harder to fight than she had
fancied it, and had brought to her mind a
shapeless fear that she had mistaken,
overvalued, the strength and efficacy of the
weapons with which she must fight that
battle. Walter's letters had not tended to
lift her heart up from its depression. His
nature was essentially candid; he had
neither the skill nor the inclination to
feign, and he had kept her exactly
informed. On his return home after his
interview with Lord and Lady Hetherington,
Joyce found a letter awaiting him. It
was from Marian, written to her lover from
Mr. Creswell's house, and ran as follows:

                      "Woolgreaves, Wednesday.

"MY DEAREST WALTER,—The project I
told you of, in my last letter, has been
carried out; mamma and I are settled for
the present at Woolgreaves. How strange
it seems, everything has been done so
suddenly when it came to the point, and Mr.
Creswell and his nieces turned out so
differently from what I expected. I did not
look for their taking any notice of us,
except in the commonplace way of people in
their position to people in ours. I always
had a notion that 'womankind' have but a
small share in men's friendships. However,
these people seem determined to make me
out in the wrong, and though I do not give
the young ladies credit for more than
intelligent docility, making them understand
that their best policy is to carry out their
uncle's kind intentions—that they have
more to gain by obedience in this respect
than to lose by anything likely to be
alienated from them in our direction, I must
acknowledge that their docility is intelligent.
They made the invitation most
graciously, urged it most heartily, and are
carrying out all it implied fully. You will
have been surprised at mamma's finding the
idea of being in any one's house endurable,
under the circumstances, but she really
likes it. Maud and Gertrude Creswell,
who are the very opposites of me in everything,
belong to the 'sweet girl' species,
and mamma has found out that she likes
sweet girls. Poor mamma, she never had
the chance of making the discovery before!
I do believe it never occurred to her that
her own daughter was not a 'sweet girl,'
until she made the conquest of the hearts
of these specimens. The truth is, also, that
mamma feels, she must feel, every one must
feel, the material comfort of living as we are
living here, in comparison with the makeshift
wretchedness of the lodging into which
we shall have to go, when our visit here
comes to a conclusion, and still more, as a
thoroughly known and felt standard of
comparison, with the intense and oppressive
sadness, and the perpetual necessity for
watchfulness in the least expense, which
have characterised our dear old house since
our sad loss. She is not herself aware of
the good which it has done her to come
here, she does not perceive the change it
has wrought in her; and it is well she
should not, for I really think the simple,
devoted, grieving soul would be hurt and