The old man was still asleep when she went back to his room; but his breathing was more troubled than it had been the night before, and the widow, who was experienced in sickness and death, told Marian that he would not last very long.

The shopman, Luke Tulliver, had come upstairs to see his master, and was hovering over the bed with a ghoulish aspect.

This young man looked very sharply at Marian as she came into the room--seemed indeed hardly able to take his eyes from her face--and there was not much favour in his look.

He knew who she was, and had been told how kindly the old man had taken to her in those last moments of his life; and he hated her with all his heart and soul, having devoted all the force of his mind for the last ten years to the cultivation of his employer's good graces, hoping that Mr.Nowell, having no one else to whom to leave his money, would end by leaving it all to him.

And here was a granddaughter, sprung from goodness knows where, to cheat him out of all his chances.