Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/179

 {|
 * colspan=3 |""

CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 8..
 * SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1869.
 * }
 * }
 * }

had begun, soon after their parting, to feel that she had been somewhat too sanguine in her anticipations of the immediate success of Walter Joyce. Each little difficulty she had had to encounter in her own life until the old home was left behind had aided to depress her, to force her to understand that the battle of life was harder to fight than she had fancied it, and had brought to her mind a shapeless fear that she had mistaken, overvalued, the strength and efficacy of the weapons with which she must fight that battle. Walter's letters had not tended to lift her heart up from its depression. His nature was essentially candid; he had neither the skill nor the inclination to feign, and he had kept her exactly informed. On his return home after his interview with Lord and Lady Hetherington, Joyce found a letter awaiting him. It was from Marian, written to her lover from Mr. Creswell's house, and ran as follows:

"Woolgreaves, Wednesday. ",—The project I told you of, in my last letter, has been carried out; mamma and I are settled for the present at Woolgreaves. How strange it seems, everything has been done so suddenly when it came to the point, and Mr. Creswell and his nieces turned out so differently from what I expected. I did not look for their taking any notice of us, except in the commonplace way of people in their position to people in ours. I always had a notion that 'womankind' have but a small share in men's friendships. However, these people seem determined to make me out in the wrong, and though I do not give the young ladies credit for more than intelligent docility, making them understand that their best policy is to carry out their uncle's kind intentions—that they have more to gain by obedience in this respect than to lose by anything likely to be alienated from them in our direction, I must acknowledge that their docility is intelligent. They made the invitation most graciously, urged it most heartily, and are carrying out all it implied fully. You will have been surprised at mamma's finding the idea of being in any one's house endurable, under the circumstances, but she really likes it. Maud and Gertrude Creswell, who are the very opposites of me in everything, belong to the 'sweet girl' species, and mamma has found out that she likes sweet girls. Poor mamma, she never had the chance of making the discovery before! I do believe it never occurred to her that her own daughter was not a 'sweet girl,' until she made the conquest of the hearts of these specimens. The truth is, also, that mamma feels, she must feel, every one must feel, the material comfort of living as we are living here, in comparison with the makeshift wretchedness of the lodging into which we shall have to go, when our visit here comes to a conclusion, and still more, as a thoroughly known and felt standard of comparison, with the intense and oppressive sadness, and the perpetual necessity for watchfulness in the least expense, which have characterised our dear old house since our sad loss. She is not herself aware of the good which it has done her to come here, she does not perceive the change it has wrought in her; and it is well she should not, for I really think the simple, devoted, grieving soul would be hurt and