to recover a little strength as the weather improved. Of Jasper
there was no mention.

A week later came the news that Mrs Milvain had suddenly died.

This letter was received at breakfast-time. The envelope was an ordinary
one, and so little did Marian anticipate the nature of its contents that
at the first sight of the words she uttered an exclamation of pain.
Her father, who had turned from the table to the fireside with his
newspaper, looked round and asked what was the matter.

'Mrs Milvain died the day before yesterday.'

'Indeed!'

He averted his face again and seemed disposed to say no more. But in a
few moments he inquired:

'What are her daughters likely to do?'

'I have no idea.'

'Do you know anything of their circumstances?'

'I believe they will have to depend upon themselves.'

Nothing more was said. Afterwards Mrs Yule made a few sympathetic
inquiries, but Marian was very brief in her replies.

Ten days after that, on a Sunday afternoon when Marian and her mother
were alone in the sitting-room, they heard the knock of a visitor at the
front door. Yule was out, and there was no likelihood of the visitor's
wishing to see anyone but him. They listened; the servant went to the
door, and, after a murmur of voices, came to speak to her mistress.

'It's a gentleman called Mr Milvain,' the girl reported, in a way that
proved how seldom callers presented themselves. 'He asked for Mr Yule,
and when I said he was out, then he asked for Miss Yule.' Mother and
daughter looked anxiously at each other. Mrs Yule was nervous and
helpless.

'Show Mr Milvain into the study,' said Marian, with sudden decision.

'Are you going to see him there?' asked her mother in a hurried whisper.

'I thought you would prefer that to his coming in here.'

'Yes--yes. But suppose father comes back before he's gone?'

'What will it matter? You forget that he asked for father first.'

'Oh yes! Then don't wait.'

Marian, scarcely less agitated than her mother, was just leaving the
room, when she turned back again.

'If father comes in, you will tell him before he goes into the study?'

'Yes, I will.'

The fire in the study was on the point of extinction; this was the first
thing Marian's eye perceived on entering, and it gave her assurance that
her father would not be back for some hours. Evidently he had intended
it to go out; small economies of this kind, unintelligible to people who
have always lived at ease, had