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.