"chaff" of the school- boys had
made him singularly misogynistic. Since
the early days of his youth, when he had
been compelled to give a very unwilling
attendance twice a week at the dancing
academy of Mr. Hardy, where the boys of
the Helmingham Grammar School had their
manners softened, nor were suffered to
become brutal, by the study of the
terpsichorean art, in the company of the young
ladies from the Misses Lewins' establishment,
Walter Joyce had resolutely eschewed
any and every charge of mixing in
female society. He knew nothing of it,
and pretended to despise it; it is needless
to say, therefore, that so soon as he was
brought into daily communication with a
girl like Marian Ashurst, possessed both of
beauty and refinement, he fell hopelessly
in love with her, and gave up every
thought, idea, and hope, save that in
which she bore a part. She was his goddess,
and he would worship her humbly
and at a distance. It would be sufficient
for him to touch the hem of her robe, to
hear the sound of her voice, to gaze at
her with big dilated eyes, which—not that
he knew it—were eloquent with love, and
tenderness, and worship.

Their love was known to each other, and
to but very few else. Mr. Ashurst, looking
up from his newspaper in the blessed
interval between the departure of the boys
to bed, and the modest little supper, the
only meal which the family—in which
Joyce was included—had in private, may
have noticed the figures of his daughter
and his usher, erst his favourite pupil,
lingering in the deepening twilight round
the lawn, or seen "their plighted shadows
blended into one" in the soft rays of the
moonlight. But, if he thought anything
about it, he never made any remark.
Life was very hard and very earnest with
James Ashurst, and he may have found
something softening and pleasing in this
little bit of romance, something which he
may have wished to leave undisturbed by
worldly suggestions or practical hints. Or,
he may have had no idea of what was
actually going on. A man with an incipient
disease beginning to tell upon him,
with a sickly wife, and a perpetual striving
not merely to make both ends meet, but to
prevent them bursting so wide asunder as
to leave a gap through which he must
inevitably fall into ruin between them, has
but little time, or opportunity, or inclination,
for observing narrowly the conduct
even of those near and dear to him. Mrs.
Ashurst, in her invalid state, was only too
glad to think that the few hours which
Marian took in respite from attendance on
her mother were pleasantly employed, to
inquire where or in whose society they were
passed. Neither Marian's family nor Joyce
kept any company by whom their absence
would be noticed; and as for the villagers,
they had fully made up their minds on the
one side that Marian was determined to
make a splendid match; on the other, that
the mere fact of Walter Joyce's scholarship
was so great as to incapacitate him from
the pursuit of ordinary human frailties: so
that not the ghost of a speculation as to
the relative position of the couple had
arisen amongst them. And the two young
people loved, and hoped, and erected their
little castles in the air, which were palatial
indeed as hope- depicted by Marian, though
less ambitious as limned by Walter Joyce,
when Mr. Ashurst's death came upon them
like a thunderbolt, and blew their unsubstantial
edifices into the air.

See them here on this calm summer
evening, pacing round and round the lawn,
as they used to do, in the old days already
ages ago as it seems, when James Ashurst,
newspaper in hand, would throw occasional
glances at them from the study window.
Marian, instead of letting her fingers
lightly touch her companion's wrist, as is
her wont, has passed her arm through his,
and her fingers are clasped together round
it, and she looks up in his face, as they
come to a standstill beneath the big
outspread branches of the old oak, with
an earnest tearful gaze such as she has
seldom, if ever, worn before. There must
be matter of moment between these two
just now, for Joyce's face looks wan and
worn; there are deep hollows beneath his
large eyes, and he strives ineffectually to
conceal, with an occasional movement of his
hand, the rapid anxious play of the muscles
round his mouth. Marian is the first to
speak.

"And so you take Mr. Benthall's decision
as final, Walter, and are determined to
go to London?"

"Darling, what else can I do? Here is
Mr. Benthall's letter, in which he tells me
that, without the least wish to disturb me
—a mere polite phrase that—he shall bring
his own assistant master to Helmingham.
He writes, and means kindly, I've no
doubt—but here's the fact!"

"Oh, yes, I'm sure he's a gentleman,
Walter; his letter to mamma proves that,