courage, her loving womanly nature, beaming ever more brightly when the dark shadows gathered round your lives!--think of her, man, compare her with this one, and see the difference!" And to Marian the dim personage said--"You, a young woman, handsome, clever, and with a lover who worshipped you, have bartered yourself away to that old man sitting there--for what? A fine house, which no one comes to see--carriages, in which you ride to a dull country town to receive the bows of a dozen shopkeepers, and drive home again--hawbuck servants, who talk against you as they talk against every one, but always more maliciously against any whom they have known in a different degree of life--and the title of the squire's lady! You are calculated to enjoy life which you will never behold, and to shine in society to which you will never be admitted. You wanted money, and now you have it, and how much good has it done you? Would it not have been better to have waited a little--just a little--not to have been quite so eager to throw away the worshipping lover, who has done so well, as it has turned out, and who is in every way but ill replaced by the old gentleman sitting there?" The promptings of the dim presence worked uncomfortably on both the occupants of Woolgreaves, but they had the greatest effect on the old gentleman sitting there. With the departure of the girls, and the impossibility which attended his efforts to soften his wife's coldness and do away with the vindictive feeling which she entertained towards his nieces, Mr. Creswell seemed to enter on a new and totally different sphere of existence. The bright earnest man of business became doddering and vague, his cheery look was supplanted by a worn, haggard, fixed regard; his step, which had been remarkably elastic and vigorous for a man of his years, became feeble and slow, and he constantly sat with his hand tightly pressed on his side, as though to endeavour to ease some gnawing pain. A certain amount of coldness and estrangement between him and Marian, which ensued immediately after his nieces' departure, had increased so much as entirely to change the ordinary current of their lives; the pleasant talk which he used to originate, and which she would pursue with such brightness and earnestness as to cause him the greatest delight, had dwindled down into a few careless inquiries on her part, and meaningless replies from him; and the evenings, which he had looked forward to with such pleasure, were now passed in almost unbroken silence.