Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/33

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 28..
 * SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 1869.
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remained standing where Walter Joyce had left her, gazing after his retreating figure until it had passed out of sight. At first so little did she comprehend the full meaning of the curt sentence in which he had conveyed to her his abrupt rejection of the bribe which she had proposed to him, his perfect appreciation of the snare which she had prepared for him, that she had some sort of an idea that he would hesitate on is career, stop, turn back, and finally consent, if not to an immediate concession to her views, at all events, to some further discussion, with a view to future settlement. But after his parting bow he strode unrelentingly onward, and it was not until he had reached the end of the newly-made road, and, dropping down into the meadows leading to Helmingham, had entirely disappeared, that Marian realised how completely she had been foiled, was able to understand, to estimate, and, in estimating, to wince under, the bitter scorn with which her suggestion had been received, the scathing terms in which that scorn had been conveyed. A money value for anything to be desired—that was the only way in which he could make it clear to her understanding or appreciation—was not that what he had said? A money value! Marian Creswell was not of those who sedulously hide their own failings from themselves, shrink at the very thought of them, make cupboard-skeletons of them, to be always kept under turned key. Too sensible for this, she knew that this treatment only enhanced the importance of the skeleton, without at all benefiting its possessor, felt that much the better plan was to take it out and subject it to examination, observe its form and its articulation, dust its bones, see that its joints swung easily, and replace it in its cupboard-home. But all these rites were, of course, performed in private, and the world was to be kept in strict ignorance of the existence of the skeleton. And now Walter Joyce knew of it! a money value, her sole standard of appreciation! Odd as it may seem, Marian had never taken the trouble to imagine to herself to what motive Walter would ascribe her rejection of him, her preference of Mr. Creswell. True, she had herself spoken in her last letter of the impossibility of her enjoying life without wealth and the luxuries which wealth commands, but she had argued to herself that he would scarcely have believed that, principally, perhaps, from the fact of her having advanced the statement so boldly, and now she found him throwing the argument in her teeth. And if Walter knew and understood this to be the dominant passion of her soul, the great motive power of her life, the knowledge was surely not confined to him—others would know it too. In gaining her position as Mr. Creswell's wife, her success, her elation, had been so great as completely to absorb her thoughts, and what people might say as to the manner in which that success had been obtained, or the reasons for which the position had been sought, had never troubled her for one instant. Now, however, she saw at once that her designs had been suspected, and doubtless talked of, sneered at, and jested over, and her heart beat with extra speed, and the blood suffused her cheeks, as she thought of how she had probably been the subject of ale-house gossip, how the townsfolk and villagers amongst whom,