is the matter, Marian? what is it, my
love?"

"Simply that I arrive here to find
my mother wandering and imbecile—she
whom I left comparatively cheerful, and
certainly in the possession of all her senses
—that is all, nothing more," said Marian,
in a hard low voice, and with a dead-white
face and dried bloodless lips. " I thought,"
she continued, turning to the girls, " that
I might have left her safely in your charge.
I never asked for your sympathy, God
knows; I would not have had it if you had
offered it to me; but I thought you seemed
to be disposed kindly and affectionately
towards her. There was so much gush
and display in your attachment, I might
have known it had no real foundation."

" You have no right to speak to us in this
way, Mrs. Creswell!" cried Maud, making
a step in advance and standing very stiff
and erect; "you have no right to——"

"Maud," broke in Mr. Creswell, in his
coldest tone," recollect to whom you are
speaking, if you please."

"I do recollect, uncle; I am speaking to
Mrs. Ashurst's daughter—dear Mrs.
Ashurst, whom both Gertrude and I love, and
have tried to show we love her, as she
would tell you, if she could, poor darling!
And it is only because Mrs. Creswell is
her daughter that I answer her at all, after
her speaking to me in that way. I will
tell you now, Mrs. Creswell, what I should
not otherwise have mentioned, that Gerty
and I have been constant in our attendance
on Mrs. Ashurst, and that one or other of
us has always slept in the next room, to be
within call if we were wanted, and——"

"Why did you take upon yourselves to
keep me in ignorance of the change in my
mother's mental state, of this fearful
wandering and unconsciousness? — that is what
I complain of."

"Oh, I must not let them say they took
it upon themselves at all," said Dr.
Osborne, who had been looking on
uncomfortably during this dialogue; " that was
my fault entirely; the girls wanted to send
for you, but I said no, much better not. I
knew you were due home in a few days,
and your earlier arrival could not have done
the least good to my poor old friend
upstairs, and would only have been distressing
to you."

"Oh, you accept the responsibility, Dr.
Osborne?" said Marian, still in the same
hard voice." Would you have acted in the
same way with any ordinary patient, any
stranger?"

"Eh?" exclaimed the little doctor, in a
very loud key, rubbing his face hard with
his pocket-handkerchief. "What do you
ask, Marian?—any stranger?"

"Would you have taken upon yourself
to keep a daughter from her mother under
similar circumstances, supposing they had
been strangers to you?"

"No—no, perhaps not," said the little
doctor, still wildly astonished.

"It will be perhaps better, then, if
henceforth you put us on the footing of
strangers!" said Marian.

"Marian!" exclaimed Mr. Creswell.

"I mean what I said," she replied.
"Had we been on that footing now, I
should have been at my mother's bedside
some days since!" And she walked quickly
from the room.

Dr. Osborne made two steps towards his
hat, seized it, clapped it on his head, and
with remarkably unsteady legs was making
his way to the door when Mr. Creswell
took him by the arm, begged him not to
think of what had just passed, but to
remember the shock which Marian had
received, the suddenness with which this new
phase of her mother's illness had come
upon her, &c. The little doctor did not
leave the room, as apparently he had
intended at first; he sat down on a chair
close by, muttering, "Treat her as a stranger!
rocked her on my knee! brought her
through measles! father died in my arms!
treat her as a stranger!"

Two days afterwards Marian stood by
the bed on whidh lay Mrs. Ashurst, dead.
As she reverently arranged the grey hair
under the close cap, and kissed the cold
lips, she said, "You did not enjoy the
money very long, darling mother! But
you died in comfort at any rate! and that
was worth the sacrifice—if sacrifice it
were!

MORE OF WILLS AND WILL MAKING.

THE COCLOUGH BATTLE. IN TWO PARTS.

PART II.

AT last, as the war grew hotter, Mrs.
Coclough carried her husband away out of
the country to Cheltenham. Boteler House,
where they now lived, became a sort of genteel
prison—no one was admitted without giving the
countersign, as it were. " She directed the
avenue gates to be locked," said the relations—
a custom they might be reminded that obtains
a good deal. Servants were directed not to
admit any one to see him without summoning
her. Sometimes she made him do the housemaid's