"And all this risk might have been avoided if your father had only----" "Well, yes; but then, Marian darling, if my father had left me money to go to college immediately on his death I should never have known you--known you, I mean, as you are, the dearest and sweetest of women." He drew her to him as he spoke, and pressed his lips on her forehead. She received the kiss without any undue emotion, and said-- "Perhaps that had been for the best, Walter." "Marian, that's rank blasphemy. Fancy my hearing that, especially, too, on the night of my parting with you! No, my darling, all I want you to have is hope, hope and courage, and not too much ambition, dearest. Mine has been comparatively but a lotus-eating existence hitherto; to-morrow I begin the battle of life." "But slightly armed for the conflict, my poor Walter." "I don't allow that, Marian. Youth, health, and energy are not bad weapons to have on one's side, and with your love in the background----" "And the chance of achieving fame and fortune for yourself--keep that in the foreground!" "That is to me, in every way, less than the other; but it is, of course, an additional spur. And now----?" And then? When two lovers are on the eve of parting, their conversation is scarcely very interesting to any one else. Marian and Walter talked the usual pleasant nonsense, and vowed the usual constancy, took four separate farewells of each other, and parted with broken accents and lingering hand-clasps, and streaming eyes. But when Marian Ashurst sat before her toilet-glass that night in the room which had so long been her own, and which she was so soon to vacate, she thought of what Walter Joyce had said as to his future, and wondered whether, after all, she had not miscalculated the strength, not the courage, of the knight whom she had selected to wear her colours in his helm in the great contest. CHAPTER V. WOOLGREAVES. "You will be better when you have made the effort, mother," said Marian Ashurst to the widow, one day, when the beauty of the summer was at its height, and death and grief seemed very hard to bear, in the face of the unsympathising sunshine. "Don't think I underrate the effort, for indeed I don't, but you will be better when you have made it." "Perhaps so, my dear," said Mrs. Ashurst, with reluctant submissiveness. "You are right; I am sure you always are right; but it is so little use to go to any place where one can't enjoy one's self, and where everybody must see that it is impossible; and you have--you know----" Her lips trembled, her voice broke. Her little hands, still soft and pretty, twined themselves together, with an expression of pain. Then she said no more. Marian had been standing by the open window, looking out, the side of her head turned to her mother, who was glancing at her timidly. Now she crossed the room, with a quick steady step, and knelt down by Mrs. Ashurst's chair, clasping her hands upon the arm.