Mrs. Ashurst was walking in the neglected garden, and had reached the far end of the little extent when Mr. Creswell arrived at the open door of the house. A woman-servant, stolid and sturdy, was passing through the red-tiled square hall. "Is Mrs. Ashurst in?" asked the visitor. "Mrs. Ashurst is in the garden, I see--don't disturb her." Marian, who had heard the voice, answered Mr. Creswell's question by appearing on the threshold of the room which had been her father's study, and which, since his death, her mother and she had made their sitting-room. She looked weary; the too bright colour which fatigue brings to some faces was on hers, and her eyelids were red and heavy; her black dress, which had the limp, ungraceful, lustreless look of mourning attire too long unrenewed, hung on her fine upright figure after a fashion which told how little the girl cared how she looked; and the hand she first held out to Mr. Creswell, and then drew back with a faint smile, was covered with dust. "I can't shake hands," she said; "I have been tying up the last bundles of books and papers, and my hands are disgraceful. Come in here, Mr. Creswell; I believe there is _one_ unoccupied chair." He followed her into the study, and took the seat she pointed out, while she placed herself on a pile of folios which lay on the floor in front of the low wide window. Marian laid her arm upon the window-sill, and leaned her head back against one of the scanty frayed curtains. Her eyes closed for a moment, and a slight shudder passed over her. "You are very tired, Miss Ashurst, quite worn out," said Mr. Creswell; "you have been doing too much--packing all those books, I suppose." "Yes," said Marian, "I looked to that myself, and, indeed, there was nobody else to do it. But it is tiring work, and dirty,"--she struck her hands together, and shook her dress, so that a shower of dust fell from it--"and sad work besides. You know, Mr. Creswell"--here her face softened suddenly, and her voice fell--"how much my father loved his books. It is not easy to say good-bye to them; it is like a faint echo, strong enough to pain one, though, of the good-bye to himself." "But why are you obliged to say good-bye to them?" asked Mr. Creswell, with genuine anxiety and compassion. "What could we do with them?" said Marian; "there's no place to keep them. We must have taken another room specially for them if we took them to our lodgings, and there is no one to buy them here, so we are going to send them to London to be sold. I suppose they will bring a very small sum indeed--nothing, perhaps, when the expenses are paid. But it is our only means of disposing of them; so I have been dusting and sorting and arranging them all day, and I am tired and dusty and sick--sick at heart."