At about the same time that Nell Lamar met with her adventure with Wolf, important events were transpiring at Glen Forest.
Mrs. Clendenin was summoned away to a distance from home by the serious illness of a sister of her late husband. Ignorant of the precise nature of the disease, she was unwilling to expose Marian to it, and though almost equally reluctant to leave her behind, decided upon that as the safer course.
So with much tender, motherly counsel bestowed upon this child of her love, and many an injunction to Vashti to watch over her darling, she took her departure.
The young girl felt inexpressibly lonely without the mother who had been to her friend, teacher and almost sole companion, everything in one, for they had led a very secluded life, paying and receiving few visits; indeed, seldom going anywhere but to church, except that Marian took many a ramble and many a ride on her pony through the adjacent woods and over the nearer hills, usually unaccompanied save by Caius, a huge mastiff who had hitherto proved a most efficient protector.
Mrs. Clendenin had indeed never been neglectful of the Christian duty of ministering to the sick and suffering so far as lay in her power, and Marian was in this regard following in her mother's footsteps.
A mile away over the eastern hills lived two elderly maiden ladies, Esther and Janet Burns, the one a paralytic, the other feeble and nearly blind from cataract.
They had a farm, the rent of which yielded them a support, but their lives were lonely, and Marian's visits were a great boon.
She had fallen into the habit of going over almost daily to Woodland, as their place was called, and spending an hour in reading to them from the works of one or another of her favorite authors.
The Clendenins had been for generations great lovers of books, and the library at Glen Forest, though what would be considered small and of little value in these days, was large and select compared with those of their neighbors.
Marian continued her visits to Woodland after her mother had gone, and, because she found it so much less lonely there than at home, sometimes lingered half the day, to the great content of the Misses Burns.