At last they set out homeward. Maude and Gertrude started off at a rapid rate, and were soon out of sight. Mr. Creswell and Marian walked quietly on together, talking on various subjects. Mr. Creswell was the principal speaker, Marian merely answering or commenting on what he said, and, contrary to her usual custom, never originating a subject. Her companion looked at her curiously two or three times during their walk; her eyes were downcast, her forehead knit, and there was a generally troubled expression in her face. At length, when they had nearly reached their destination, and had turned from the high-road into the Woolgreaves grounds through a private gate, he said---- "You are strangely silent to-day, missy. Has anything happened to vex you?" "To vex me? Nothing in the world. And it had not even struck me that I was particularly silent. It seems to me as though we had been talking ever since we left Helmingham." "We? I, you mean. You have been almost monosyllabic in your replies." "Have I? That was scarcely polite when you take the trouble to talk to me, my kind friend. The fact is that I have been in a kind of day-dream, I believe." "About the future, Marian?" Mr. Creswell said this so earnestly that the girl looked up into his face. His eyes fell before hers as she said, steadily---- "No; about the past. The sight of the school pew, and of another person there in papa's place, called up all sorts of recollections, which I was revolving instead of listening to you. Oh no!" she added, after a pause; "I love dreaming of the past, because, though it has here and there its dim hues and its one great and ineffaceable shadow of papa's loss, it was, on the whole, a happy time. But the future----" and she stopped suddenly, and shuddered. "You have no pleasant anticipations of the future, Marian?" asked Mr. Creswell in a lower tone than he had hitherto spoken in. "Can you ask me--you who know me and know how we are circumstanced? I declare I---- There! I'm always apt to forget myself when this subject is broached, and I speak out without thinking how uncalled for and ridiculous it is. Shall we walk on?" "Not for an instant. I wanted to say a few words to you. I was talking to Dr. Osborne this morning about Mrs. Ashurst." "About mamma?" "The doctor said what cannot fail to have struck you, Marian, who are so devotedly attached to your mother and so constantly in attendance on her--that a great change has recently come over her, and that she is much more feeble and more helpless than she used to be. You have noticed this?" "I have indeed. Dr. Osborne is perfectly right. Mamma is very much changed." "It is obviously necessary that she should not feel the loss of any little comfort to which she may have been accustomed. It is most essential that her mind should not be disturbed by any harassing fears as to what might become of you after she was gone." Marian was silent. Her face was deadly pale, and her eyes were downcast.