"God forbid, my dear!" said the doctor seriously. "Which way are you going--back again to Woolgreaves? All right. I'm driving that road, and I'll set you down at the gates. Jump in, child. I wanted a few minutes' talk with you, and this has just happened luckily; we can have it without any interruption." He stretched out his hand and helped Marian into the seat by his side; then gave the brisk little pony his head, and they rattled cheerily along. "Let me see, my dear, what was I saying?" said the doctor, after the silence of a few minutes. "By the way, I think I ought to have called in the village to see little Pickering, who's in for measles, I suspect. I must start a memorandum-book, my memory is beginning to fail me. What was I saying, my dear?" "You were saying that you wanted to talk to me--about Woolgreaves, I think it must have been." "About Woolgreaves--the palace, as I called it--oh yes, that was it. See here, child; I'm the oldest friend you have in the world, and I hope one of the truest; and I want you to answer my questions frankly, and without reserve, just as if I were your father, you know." "I will do so," said Marian, after a faint flutter at her heart, caused by the notion of the little doctor, good little soul as he was, comparing himself with her dead father. "That's right," said Dr. Osborne. "I knew you almost before you came into the world, and that gives me some right to your confidence. Now, then, are you happy at Woolgreaves?" Marian hesitated a moment before she replied: "Happier than I thought I could have been--yet." "Ah, that's right, and straightforward. Mind, in all these questions I'm alluding to you, not to your mother. I know her--charming lady, affectionate, and all that, but clinging and unreasoning, likes to lie where she falls, and so on; whereas you've got a head on your shoulders, finely developed and--so on. Now, are they all kind to you at Woolgreaves? Old gentleman kind?" "Most kind!" "Of course he is. Never was a man so full of heart as he is. If he had only been at home when your poor father--ah, well, that's no matter now." "What's that you said, Dr. Osborne--that about my father?" "Stupid old fool to go blundering into such a subject! Why couldn't I have let it alone? 'Let the dead past bury its dead.' What's that I've heard my girl sing?" the old gentleman muttered to himself. Then aloud, "Nothing, my dear. I was only thinking that if Mr. Creswell had been at home just at the time I dare say we might have made some arrangement, and had Godby down from St. Vitus, and then----" "And then my father need not have died for the want of a hundred and thirty guineas! Oh, don't think I forget." And there came into the girl's face the hard, stony, rigid look which Dr. Osborne remembered there so well on the night of her father's death, six months before.