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Her daughter was so clever, so helpful, so grave, so good; her economy and management--surely they were wonderful in so young a girl, and must have come to her by instinct?--rendered life such a different, so much easier a thing, delicate as she was, and requiring so disproportionate a share of their small means to be expended on her, that it was not surprising Mrs. Ashurst should see no possibility of evil in the origin of such qualities.

As for Marian's father, he was about as likely to discover a comet or a continent as to discern a flaw in his daughter's moral nature. The child, so longed for, so fervently implored, remained always, in her father's sight, Heaven's best gift to him; and he rejoiced exceedingly, and wondered not a little, as she developed into the girl whom we have seen beside his death-bed. He rejoiced because she was so clever, so quick, so ready, had such a masterly mind and happy faculty of acquiring knowledge; knowledge of the kind he prized and reverenced; of the kind which he felt would remain to her, an inheritance for her life. He wondered why she was so strong, for he knew she did not take the peculiar kind of strength of character from him or from her mother.