"I wish you'd leave me," said Marion Fay.
Then with a look of mingled surprise and anger she left the room, and returned across the street to No. 10. "She doesn't seem to me to care a straw about it," said the niece to her aunt; "but she got up just as highty tighty as usual and asked me to go away."
When the Quaker came to the door, and opened it with his latch-key, Marion was in the passage ready to receive him. Till she had heard the sound of the lock she had not moved from the room, hardly from the position, in which the other girl had left her. She had sunk into a chair which had been ready for her, and there she had remained thinking over it. "Father," she said, laying her hand upon his arm as she went to meet him, and looking up into his face;—"father?"
"My child!"
"Have you heard any tidings in the City?"
"Have you heard any, Marion?"
"Is it true then?" she said, seizing both his arms as though to support her.
"Who knows? Who can say that it be true till further tidings shall come? Come in, Marion. It is not well that we should discuss it here."
"Is it true? Oh, father;—oh, father; it will kill me."
"Nay, Marion, not that. After all, the lad was little more than a stranger to thee."