low origin. Naturally enough she defended herself with such
weapons as a sense of cruel injustice supplied. More than once
the two all but parted. It did not come to an actual rupture,
chiefly because Yule could not do without his wife; her tendance
had become indispensable. And then there was the child to
consider.

From the first it was Yule's dread lest Marian should be infected
with her mother's faults of speech and behaviour. He would
scarcely permit his wife to talk to the child. At the earliest
possible moment Marian was sent to a day-school, and in her tenth
year she went as weekly boarder to an establishment at Fulham;
any sacrifice of money to insure her growing up with the tongue
and manners of a lady. It can scarcely have been a light trial to
the mother to know that contact with her was regarded as her
child's greatest danger; but in her humility and her love for
Marian she offered no resistance. And so it came to pass that one
day the little girl, hearing her mother make some flagrant
grammatical error, turned to the other parent and asked gravely:
'Why doesn't mother speak as properly as we do?' Well, that is
one of the results of such marriages, one of the myriad miseries
that result from poverty.

The end was gained at all hazards. Marian grew up everything that
her father desired. Not only had she the bearing of refinement,
but it early became obvious that nature had well endowed her
with brains. From the nursery her talk was of books, and at the
age of twelve she was already able to give her father some
assistance as an amanuensis.