"Very well, my dear," said the old lady,
quietly, ''I'll ask you one question, and
after that you'll never hear me open my
lips on the matter. Do you love Mr.
Creswell?"

"Yes, mother!"

"Better than any other man living?"

"Ye — yes, mother!" She hesitated for
an instant, but the answer came round and
firm at last.

"You swear that to me?"

"Yes, mother!"

"That's enough, my dear! I shall be
ready to face your father now." Mrs.
Ashurst then removed her arm from her
daughter's neck and lay back in her chair.
After a minute or two she told Marian she
had heard the luncheon gong sound, and
that she would prefer being left alone for a
little. When Marian came up to kiss her
before leaving the room, the little old lady's
white face became suffused with a glow of
colour, and the voice in which she prayed
God bless her child, and keep her happy
throughout her life, was broken with
emotion, and weaker and fainter than ever.

When she was alone Mrs. Ashurst pondered
long and earnestly over what she had
just heard. Of course, the question of
Marian's future— and to her parents as well
as herself the future of every girl means
her marriage — had been often thought of by
her mother. She and her dead husband
had talked of it in the summer evenings
after supper and before retiring to rest, the
only time which the school-work left for
James Ashurst to devote to himself, and
even then he was generally rather fatigued
with past, or pre-occupied with growing
work. It was very general, the talk
between them, and principally carried on by
Mrs. Ashurst; she had wondered when
Marian would marry, and whom; she had
gone through the list of eligible young men
in the neighbourhood, and had speculated
on their incomes and their chances of being
thrown with Marian in such little company
as they kept. She had wondered how they
at home would be able to get on without
her; whether she herself would be able
to undertake the domestic superintendence
as she had clone in the old days, before
Marian was of an age to be useful; whether
Marian would not settle somewhere near
where she might still take an interest in
her old work, and many other odd and
profitless speculations, to which the dominie
would give an affirmative or negative
grunt or comment, wondering all the while
how he was to meet that acceptance which
he had given to Barlow, and which became
due on the twenty-seventh, or whether his
old college chum South, now a flourishing
physician in Cheltenham, would lend him
the fifty pounds for which he had made so
earnest an appeal. But all this seemed
years ago to Mrs. Ashurst as she thought of
it. For many months before her husband's
death the subject had not been mooted
between them ; the cold, calm, external
impassibility, and the firm determination of
Marian's character, seemed to her mother
to mark her for one of those women destined
by nature to be single, and therefore somewhat
fitted for the condition. A weak woman
herself, and with scarcely any perception
of character, believing that nearly all
women were made in the same mould, and
after the same type, Mrs. Ashurst could
not understand the existence of the volcano
under the placid surface. Only gushing,
giggling, blushing girls fulfilled her idea of
loving women, or women lovable by men.
Marian was so "odd," and "strange," so
determined, so strong-minded, that she
never seemed to think of love-making,
nor indeed, her mother thought, had she
been ever so much that way disposed would
she have had any time for it.

And now Marian was going to be
married? Years rolled away, and the old lady
saw herself in the same condition, but how
differently circumstanced. Her James was
young, and strong, and handsome. How
splendid he looked in his flannel boating-dress,
when he came to spend a hurried
holiday at her father's river-side cottage!
how all the people in the church admired
him on their wedding-day! It was impossible
that Marian could love this man,
who was quite old enough to be her father,
love him, that is, in the proper way, in the
way that a husband should be loved. She
could look up to him, and respect, and
reverence him, and so on, but that was not
the way in which she had loved her James.
She had not the least respect for him, but
used to laugh at him for his awkwardness,
and great strong clumsy ways, never knowing
what to do with his long legs and his
great feet, and used to call him "a great
goose," she recollected that, and the
recollection brought the colour to her face, and
made her smile in spite of herself. Marian
could never call Mr. Creswell "a great
goose," could never think of him so
familiarly, no matter how long they might be
married. What could have brought it
about? She had very good eyes, she
thought, and yet she had never suspected