“No, grandfather.  But tell me about my father.  Is he still living?” the girl asked eagerly.

“Never mind him, child,” answered Jacob Nowell.  “He hasn’t troubled himself about you, and you can’t do better than keep clear of him.  No good ever came of anything he did yet, and no good ever will come.  Don’t you have anything to do with him, Marian.  He’ll try to get all your money away from you, if you give him a chance—­depend upon that.”

“He is living, then?  O, my dear grandfather, do tell me something more about him.  Remember that whatever his errors may have been, he is my father—­the only relation I have in the world except yourself.”

“His whole life has been one long error,” answered Jacob Nowell.  “I tell you, child, the less you know of him the better.”

He was not to be moved from this, and would say no more about his son, in spite of Marian’s earnest pleading.  The doctor came in presently, for the second time that evening, and forbade his patient’s talking any more.  He told Gilbert, as he left the house, that the old man’s life was now only a question of so many days or so many hours.

The old woman who did all the work of Jacob Nowell’s establishment—­a dilapidated-looking widow, whom nobody in that quarter ever remembered in any other condition than that of widowhood—­had prepared a small bedroom at the back of the house for Marian; a room in which Percival had slept in his early boyhood, and where the daughter found faint traces of her father’s life.  Mr. Macready as Othello, in a spangled tunic, with vest of actual satin let into the picture, after the pre-Raphaelite or realistic tendency commonly found in such juvenile works of art, hung over the narrow painted mantelpiece.  The fond mother had had this masterpiece framed and glazed in the days when her son was still a little lad, unspoiled by University life and those splendid aspirations which afterwards made his home hateful to him.  There were some tattered books upon a shelf by the bed—­school prizes, an old Virgil, a “Robinson Crusoe” shorn of its binding.  The boy’s name was written in them in a scrawling schoolboy hand; not once, but many times, after the fashion of juvenile bibliopoles, with primitive rhymes in Latin and English setting forth his proprietorship in the volumes.  Caricatures were scribbled upon the fly-leaves and margins of the books, the date whereof looked very old to Marian, long before her own birth.

It was not till very late that she consented to leave the old man’s side and go to the room which had been got ready for her, to lie down for an hour.  She would not hear of any longer rest though the humble widow was quite pathetic in her entreaties that the dear young lady would try to get a good night’s sleep, and would leave the care of Mr. Nowell to her, who knew his ways, poor dear gentleman, and would watch over him as carefully as if he had been her own poor husband, who kept his bed for a twelvemonth before he died, and had to be waited on hand and foot.  Marian told this woman that she did not want rest.  She had come to town on purpose to be with her grandfather, and would stay with him as long as he needed her care.