"No--no, perhaps not," said the little doctor, still wildly astonished.
"It will be perhaps better, then, if henceforth you put us on the footing of strangers!" said Marian.
"Marian!" exclaimed Mr. Creswell.
"I mean what I said," she replied. "Had we been on that footing now, I should have been at my mother's bedside some days since!" And she walked quickly from the room.
Dr. Osborne made two steps towards his hat, seized it, clapped it on his head, and with remarkably unsteady legs was making his way to the door, when Mr. Creswell took him by the arm, begged him not to think of what had just passed, but to remember the shock which Marian had received, the suddenness with which this new phase of her mother's illness had come upon her, etc. The little doctor did not leave the room, as apparently he had intended at first; he sat down on a chair close by, muttering--
"Treat her as a stranger rocked her on my knee brought her through measles! father died in my arms treat her as a stranger!"
Two days afterwards Marian stood by the bed on which lay Mrs. Ashurst, dead. As she reverently arranged the gray hair under the close cap, and kissed the cold lips, she said--
"You did not enjoy the money very long, darling mother! But you died in comfort, at any rate and that was worth the sacrifice--if sacrifice it were!"