"Master will be glad to see you, miss, in the library, if you please."

"Very good, Wilson. Is Mr. Creswell alone?"

"Mr. Radford, the agent from Brocksopp, have been with him for the last half-hour, miss; but he's on the point to go. I saw him getting on his gloves as I left the room."

"Very good; tell Mr. Creswell I will be with him at once."

The servant retired, closing the door behind her, and Marian was left alone with her mother. They were in what they had become accustomed to call "their own" sitting-room, with its bright chintz furniture and tasteful appointments, as Marian had described them in her letter to Walter. It was tolerably early morning, just after ten o'clock, and the sun lit up the garden and the grass-plot, from which the slight frost had not yet disappeared, though the snowdrops and the crocuses were already showing their heads in the flower-borders, while the ditch-banks of the neighbourhood were thick with promised crops of violets and primroses. Mrs. Ashurst, whose infirmities seemed greatly to have increased within the past six months, was sitting by the fire with her face turned towards the window, enjoying the brightness of the morning; but her back was turned to the door, and she had not caught the servant's message.

"What was that Martha said, my dear?" she asked. "My hearing's getting worse, I think. I miss almost everything that's said now."

"You had your back towards her, dear mother; and you were too pleasantly occupied looking at the bright weather outside, and thinking that we should soon be able to get you out for a turn up and down the long walk, in the sun. Martha came to say that Mr. Creswell wanted to see me in the library."

"Again, Marian? Why, you were with him for hours--when was it?--the day before yesterday."

"Yes, mother; you're quite right. I was there, helping him with his accounts. But there was some information which had to be supplied before we could finish them. I suppose he has obtained that now, and we can go on with our work."

"You're a clever child, my dear," said the old lady, fondly stroking her daughter's shining hair.

"There's more use than cleverness in what I'm doing for Mr. Creswell, darling mother. Don't you remember how I used to make out the boarders' bills for poor papa, and the 'general running account' to be submitted half-yearly to the governors? These are larger and more intricate matters, of course, dealing as they do with the amount and sources of Mr. Creswell's income; but I think I have mastered the method of dealing with them, and Mr. Creswell, I imagine, thinks so too."

"It must be a very large income, my dear, to keep up all this place, and----"

"Large! You have no conception of it, mother. I had no conception of it, nor of how it came in, and grew, and is for ever growing, until it was before me in black and white. Original funds, speculations, mortgages, investments in this and that, in ships and wharves and breweries, in foreign railroads, and---- Ah! good heavens, it's enough to turn one's brain to think of."

And the girl pressed her forehead with her hands, and stood motionless.

"Yes, my dear," said the old lady, stretching out her hand, and, drawing her daughter gently towards her. "I've thought more than once that this house with its surroundings was scarcely the best school for a young girl who had to face poverty, and battle for her livelihood. And, indeed, I'm far from thinking that, even so far as I'm concerned, it was wise that we should originally have come here, or that we should have stayed so long. I wish you would propose about Mrs. Swainson's lodgings again, Marian, for----"

"For Heaven's sake, don't mention Mrs. Swainson's horrid lodgings again, mother. Are you tired of your visit here?"

"No, my dear, not in the least; I'm very happy, as happy as I ever expect to be again in this world; but I know there's such a thing as outstaying your welcome, and----"

"Who has been putting such ideas into your head? Not those horrible girls! They have nothing to do with the arrangements of the house, they--there, I always lose my head when I think or speak of them!"

"You do indeed, Marian; I cannot imagine how it is that you and Maude and Gertrude don't get on together. You always seem to blaze up like I don't know what, especially you and Maude! No, my dear, the young ladies have always hoped we should stay on, but that of course is impossible, and----"

"Perhaps not impossible, mother!"

"Why not, my dear? Do you think that---- Oh no, thank you! I guess what you mean; I'm an old woman, I know, but I've still my faculties left, and I can see through a millstone as well as most people of my age, and though I'm not apt to be--I forget the word, but you know what I mean--I declare once for all I won't do it!"

"Won't do what, mother? I declare I have no notion what you mean."

"Oh yes, you have, Marian. You heard what Dr. Osborne, whom I never could abide, but that's neither here nor there, suggested about my becoming Mrs. Caddy, or rather Mrs. Caddy's successor, when she went. I'm sure you, who talk of having a spirit and a proper pride, ought to see that I couldn't do that! Your poor father wouldn't rest in his grave if he knew it! You remember he never would let me do anything with the boys' clothes, or hair-brushes, or that--always would have a wardrobe woman; and now to think of my becoming a housekeeper----"

"But, mother--there! you shall not worry yourself with that idea any more, and still we won't think just yet of Mrs. Swainson's nasty lodging! Kiss me now, and let me go! I've been keeping Mr. Creswell waiting full ten minutes."

What change had come over Marian Ashurst to cause her to speak in this way to her mother with flushed cheek, and kindling eye, and elated look? What hope was dawning over the deep of that black blank sunless future, which she had seen before her in all its miserable intensity, its unavoidable dead level gloom, when first she arrived on a visit at Woolgreaves? What was the vision which during all that period, but especially since Tom Creswell's death, had haunted her waking and sleeping, in company and in solitude, had been ever present to her thoughts, and had wrung her heart and disturbed her mental peace more keenly even than the thought of poverty, the desire for wealth? Dare she do it? She could, she had but little doubt of that, but little doubt of Mr. Creswell's daily increasing dependence on her and regard for her. There was no one else in the world now in whom he seemed to take the slightest interest. He had been deeply grieved at his son's death, laid up for weeks afterwards--one would have thought that life for him had lost all its zest and flavour; but lately, in going through his business details with Marian, he had referred to the dead lad almost calmly, and had spoken of him almost as he used to speak of him in the days when his brusquerie and bad style and consequent unpopularity were gall and wormwood to his father's heart. She was thoroughly and entirely essential to him. He had told her so. He had said plainly enough that with no one else, no paid hirelings, no clerk, however trustworthy or confidentially employed, could he have gone through the private accounts, which showed the sources of his revenue and its investment, and which had dropped into almost hopeless confusion and arrear, from which they were only rescued by her quick apprehension, clear business knowledge, and indefatigable industry. He sat by in mute wonder, as she seized upon each point as it was laid before her, and stopped him in the midst of his verbose and clumsy explanation, to show how clearly she comprehended him, and how lightly she undertook the unravelment of matters which seemed to him almost hopeless in their chaotic disarrangement.

What a wonderful girl she was, Mr. Creswell thought, as he looked at her poring over the items of account as he read them out to her, and marked the sudden manner in which her cheek flushed and her bosom heaved and her eye dilated, while that ready pen never ceased in its noiseless course over the paper. How thoroughly natural to be able to throw herself so entirely into the work before her, to take evident interest in what would be to others the driest detail, mere husk and draff of soulless business! He knew nothing of Marian Ashurst, less than nothing. That dry detail and those soulless figures were to her more interesting than the finest fiction, the most soul-stirring poetry. For they meant something much better than fiction; they meant fact--wealth, position, everything. She remembered, even as she jotted down from Mr. Creswell's loose memoranda or vague recollections of sums invested here or securities lying there, or interest payable at such and such dates--she remembered how, as a child, she had read of Sinbad's visit to the Valley of Diamonds, and how, in one of the few novels she had come across in later life, she had been breathlessly interested in the account of the treasure in Monte Christo's grotto. Those delights were fictional, but the wealth recorded in her own handwriting before her own eyes was real--real, and, if she mistook not, if the golden dreams had not warped her intellect and dazzled her brain, enjoyable by her. Thoroughly enjoyable, not as a miserable dependent permitted to bask in the rays of prosperity, but as the originator of the prosperity itself, the mistress of the fortune--the---- No wonder her cheek flushed; she felt her brain throb and her head whirl; the magnitude of the stakes, the chances of success appalled her. She had never realised them before, and, while they were beginning to dawn on her, the desperate effect of her proposed end upon one who had hitherto been loved by her she had steadfastly contrived to ignore.

If she dared to do it? Why should she not dare; what was it to dare, after all? Was she to lose her chance in life, and such a chance, simply because as a girl she had agreed to a foolish contract, which, as it seemed, it was impossible could ever be fulfilled? Was her youth to be sacrificed to a pr............