Part 38 (1/2)

'Before long,' replied Dora, with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt, 'he's going to take us to call on Mrs Boston Wright. I hardly thought he was serious at first, but he says he really means it.'

Marian grew more and more silent. At home she had felt that it would not be difficult to explain her troubles to these sympathetic girls, but now the time had come for speaking, she was oppressed by shame and anxiety.

True, there was no absolute necessity for making the confession this evening, and if she chose to resist her father's prejudice, things might even go on in a seemingly natural way. But the loneliness of her life had developed in her a sensitiveness which could not endure situations such as the present; difficulties which are of small account to people who take their part in active social life, hara.s.sed her to the destruction of all peace. Dora was not long in noticing the dejected mood which had come upon her friend.

'What's troubling you, Marian?'

'Something I can hardly bear to speak of. Perhaps it will be the end of your friends.h.i.+p for me, and I should find it very hard to go back to my old solitude.'

The girls gazed at her, in doubt at first whether she spoke seriously.

'What can you mean?' Dora exclaimed. 'What crime have you been committing?'

Maud, who leaned with her elbows on the table, searched Marian's face curiously, but said nothing.

'Has Mr Milvain shown you the new number of The Current?' Marian went on to ask.

They replied with a negative, and Maud added:

'He has nothing in it this month, except a review.'

'A review?' repeated Marian in a low voice.

'Yes; of somebody's novel.'

'Markland's,' supplied Dora.

Marian drew a breath, but remained for a moment with her eyes cast down.

'Do go on, dear,' urged Dora. 'Whatever are you going to tell us?'

'There's a notice of father's book,' continued the other, 'a very ill-natured one; it's written by the editor, Mr Fadge. Father and he have been very unfriendly for a long time. Perhaps Mr Milvain has told you something about it?'

Dora replied that he had.

'I don't know how it is in other professions,' Marian resumed, 'but I hope there is less envy, hatred and malice than in this of ours. The name of literature is often made hateful to me by the things I hear and read. My father has never been very fortunate, and many things have happened to make him bitter against the men who succeed; he has often quarrelled with people who were at first his friends, but never so seriously with anyone as with Mr Fadge. His feeling of enmity goes so far that it includes even those who are in any way a.s.sociated with Mr Fadge. I am sorry to say'--she looked with painful anxiety from one to the other of her hearers--'this has turned him against your brother, and--'

Her voice was checked by agitation.

'We were afraid of this,' said Dora, in a tone of sympathy.

'Jasper feared it might be the case,' added Maud, more coldly, though with friendliness.

'Why I speak of it at all,' Marian hastened to say, 'is because I am so afraid it should make a difference between yourselves and me.'

'Oh! don't think that!' Dora exclaimed.

'I am so ashamed,' Marian went on in an uncertain tone, 'but I think it will be better if I don't ask you to come and see me. It sounds ridiculous; it is ridiculous and shameful. I couldn't complain if you refused to have anything more to do with me.'

'Don't let it trouble you,' urged Maud, with perhaps a trifle more of magnanimity in her voice than was needful. We quite understand. Indeed, it shan't make any difference to us.'