him very well for the present; the apartments at the Grange, and the
services of Mr. Carley and his dependents, had been put at his disposal
by the owner of the estate, together with all farm and garden produce.
Existence here therefore cost him very little; his chief expenses were in
gifts to the bailiff and his underlings, which he bestowed with a liberal
hand. His plans for the future were as yet altogether vague and
unsettled. He had thoughts of emigration, of beginning life afresh in a
new country--anything to escape from the perplexities that surrounded him
here; and he had his reasons for keeping his wife secluded. Nor did his
conscience disturb him much--he was a man who had his conscience in very
good training--as to the unfairness of this proceeding. Marian was happy,
he told himself; and when time came for some change in the manner of
her existence, he doubted if the change would be for the better.

So the days and weeks and months had passed away, bringing little variety
with them, and none of what the world calls pleasure. Marian read and
worked and rambled in the country lanes and meadows with Ellen Carley,
and visited the poor people now and then, as she had been in the habit of
doing at Lidford. She had not very much to give them, but gave all she
could; and she had a gentle sympathetic manner, which made her welcome
amongst them, most of all where there were children, for whom she had
always a special attraction. The little ones clung to her and trusted
her, looking up at her lovely face with spontaneous affection.

William Carley, the bailiff, was a big broad-shouldered man, with a heavy
forbidding countenance, and a taciturn habit by no means calculated to
secure him a large circle of friends. His daughter and only child was
afraid of him; his wife had been afraid of him in her time, and had faded
slowly out of a life that had been very joyless, unawares, hiding her
illness from him to the last, as if it had been a sort of offence against