“There is no occasion to speak of the past,” Marian replied gravely.  “Providence was very good to me; but I know my poor mother’s last days were full of sorrow.  I cannot tell how far it might have been in your power to prevent that.  It is not my place to blame, or even to question your conduct.”

“You are an uncommonly dutiful daughter,” Mr. Nowell exclaimed with rather a bitter laugh; “I thought that you would have repudiated me altogether perhaps; would have taken your tone from my father, who has grown pig-headed with old age, and cannot forgive me for having had the aspirations of a gentleman.”

“It is a pity there should not be union between my grandfather and you at such a moment as this,” Marian said.

“O, we are civil enough to each other.  I bear no malice against the old man, though many sons in my position might consider themselves hardly used.  And now I may as well go upstairs and pay my respects.  Why is not your husband with you, by the bye?”

“He is not wanted here; and I do not even know that he is in London.”

“Humph!  He seems rather a mysterious sort of person, this husband of yours.”

Marian took no notice of this remark, and the father and daughter went upstairs to the sick-room together.  The old silversmith received his son with obvious coolness, and was evidently displeased at seeing Marian and her father together.

Percival Nowell, however, on his part, appeared to be in an unusually affectionate and dutiful mood this evening.  He held his place by the bedside resolutely, and insisted on sharing Marian’s watch that night.  So all through the long night those two sat together, while the old man passed from uneasy slumber to more uneasy wakefulness, and back to troubled sleep again, his breathing growing heavier and more laboured with every hour.  They were very quiet, and could have found but little to say to each other, had there been no reason for their silence.  That first brief impulsive feeling of affection past, Marian could only think of this newly-found father as the man who had made her mother’s life lonely and wretched while he pursued his own selfish pleasures; and who had allowed her to grow to womanhood without having been the object of one thought or care upon his part.  She could not forget these things, as she sat opposite to him in the awful silence of the sick-room, stealing a glance at his face now and then, and wondering at the strange turn of fortune which had brought them thus together.

It was not a pleasant face by any means—­not a countenance to inspire love or confidence.  Handsome still, but with a faded look, like a face that had grown pallid and wrinkled in the feverish atmosphere of vicious haunts—­under the flaring gas that glares down upon the green cloth of a rouge-et-noir table, in the tumult of crowded race-courses, the press and confusion of the betting-ring—­it was the face of a battered roue, who had lived his life, and outlived the smiles of fortune; the face of a man to whom honest thoughts and hopes had long been unknown.  There was a disappointed peevish look about the drooping corners of the mouth, an angry glitter in the eyes.