ee I can distinguish. Yet,' she added quickly, 'I knew that the
ash was late; some lines of Tennyson come to my memory.'

'Which are those?'

'Delaying, as the tender ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green,

somewhere in the "Idylls."'

'I don't remember; so I won't pretend to--though I should do so as a
rule.'

She looked at him oddly, and seemed about to laugh, yet did not.

'You have had little experience of the country?' Jasper continued.

'Very little. You, I think, have known it from childhood?'

'In a sort of way. I was born in Wattleborough, and my people have
always lived here. But I am not very rural in temperament. I have really
no friends here; either they have lost interest in me, or I in them.
What do you think of the girls, my sisters?'

The question, though put with perfect simplicity, was embarrassing.

'They are tolerably intellectual,' Jasper went on, when he saw that it
would be difficult for her to answer. 'I want to persuade them to try
their hands at literary work of some kind or other. They give lessons,
and both hate it.'

'Would literary work be less--burdensome?' said Marian, without looking
at him.

'Rather more so, you think?'

She hesitated.

'It depends, of course, on--on several things.'

'To be sure,' Jasper agreed. 'I don't think they have any marked faculty
for such work; but as they certainly haven't for teaching, that doesn't
matter. It's a question of learning a business. I am going through my
apprenticeship, and find it a long affair. Money would shorten it, and,
unfortunately, I have none.'

'Yes,' said Marian, turning her eyes upon the stream, 'money is a help
in everything.'

'Without it, one spends the best part of one's life in toiling for that
first foothold which money could at once purchase. To have money is
becoming of more and more importance in a literary career; principally
because to have money is to have friends. Year by year, such influence
grows of more account. A lucky man will still occasionally succeed by
dint of his own honest perseverance, but the chances are dead against
anyone who can't make private interest with influential people; his work
is simply overwhelmed by that of the men who have better opportunities.'

'Don't you think that, even to-day, really good work will sooner or
later be recognised?'

'Later, rather than sooner; and very likely the man can't wait; he
starves in the meantime. You understa