Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/227

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 10..
 * SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1869.
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few minutes passed before Marian felt sufficiently recovered to move. The attack had been so unexpected and so brutal that she would have been perfectly paralysed by it even if the words which the boy had used had been the outpourings of mere random savagery, instead of, as they evidently were, the result of premeditated and planned insult—insult grounded on hate, and hate springing from fear. Marian's quick intelligence made that plain to her in a moment. The boy feared her, feared that she might obtain an ascendancy over his father, and get the old gentleman to advance money to Mrs. Ashurst, money that ought not to go out of the family, and should be his at his father's death, or perhaps fancied she was scheming to quarter herself at Woolgreaves, and. Good Heavens, could he have thought that! Why the idea had never crossed her mind. She dismissed it at once, not without a half smile at the notion of the retribution she could inflict, at the thought that the boy had suggested to her what might be such a punishment for himself as she had never dreamed of.

She walked on quickly, communing with herself. So, they had found her out, had they? Tom's blurted warning was the first intimation she had had that what she knew to be the guiding purpose of her life, the worship of, love for, intended acquisition of money, was suspected by any, known to any one else. No syllable on the subject, either jestingly or reproachfully, had ever been breathed to her before. It was not likely that she would have heard of it. Her father had considered her to be perfect, her mother had set down all her small economies, scrapings, and hoardings which were practised in the household, to Marian's "wonderful management;" and however the feminine portion of the Whicher and Croker families might talk among themselves, their respect for the schoolmaster and their dread of Marian's powers of retort always effectually prevented them from dropping any hints at the schoolhouse. So Marian heard it now for the first time. Yet there was nothing in it to be ashamed of, she thought; if her poor father had been guided by this sentiment his life might have been perhaps preserved, and certainly an immense amount of misery would have been spared to them all. Love of money, a desire to acquire wealth, who should reproach her for that? Not Mr. Creswell, of whose good opinion she seemed to think first, for had not his whole life been passed in the practice, and was not his present position the result, the example to which she could point in defence of her creed? Not Maud or Gertrude Creswell, who if they had possessed the smallest spark of independence would have been earning their bread as companions or governesses. Not the people of the village, who. Yes, by Tom's account, they did talk of her, but what then? What the people in the village thought or said about her had never been of the smallest interest to Marian Ashurst when she lived among them, and was brought into daily communion with them; it was therefore not likely that she would take much heed of it now, as she had made up her mind that she and her mother must go and live in another place, far away from all old scenes and associations, when they left Woolgreaves.

When they left Woolgreaves! Hitherto