The month at Cheltenham was passed very quietly and would have been a very happy month with Mary Masters but that there grew upon her from day to day increasing fears of what she would have to undergo when she returned to Dillsborough. At the moment when she was hesitating with Larry Twentyman, when she begged him to wait six months and then at last promised to give him an answer at the end of two, she had worked herself up to think that it might possibly be her duty to accept her lover for the sake of her family. At any rate she had at that moment thought that the question of duty ought to be further considered, and therefore she had vacillated. When the two months\' delay was accorded to her, and within that period the privilege of a long absence from Dillsborough, she put the trouble aside for a while with the common feeling that the chapter of accidents might do something for her. Before she had reached Cheltenham the chapter of accidents had done much. When Reginald Morton told her that he could not have congratulated her on such prospects, and had explained to her why in truth he had been angry at the bridge,—how he had been anxious to be alone with her that he might learn whether she were really engaged to this man,—then she had known that her answer to Larry Twentyman at the end of the two months must be a positive refusal.

But as she became aware of this a new trouble arose and harassed her very soul. When she had asked for the six months she had not at the moment been aware, she had not then felt, that a girl who asks for time is supposed to have already surrendered. But since she had made that unhappy request the conviction had grown upon her. She had read it in every word her stepmother said to her and in her father\'s manner. The very winks and hints and little jokes which fell from her younger sisters told her that it was so. She could see around her the satisfaction which had come from the settlement of that difficult question,—a satisfaction which was perhaps more apparent with her father than even with the others. Then she knew what she had done, and remembered to have heard that a girl who expresses a doubt is supposed to have gone beyond doubting. While she was still at Dillsborough there was a feeling that no evil would arise from this if she could at last make up her mind to be Mrs. Twentyman;—but when the settled conviction came upon her, after hearing Reginald Morton\'s words, then she was much troubled.

He stayed only a couple of days at Cheltenham and during that time said very little to her. He certainly spoke no word which would give her a right to think that he himself was attached to her. He had been interested about her, as was his aunt, Lady Ushant, because she had been known and her mother had been known by the old Mortons. But there was nothing of love in all that. She had never supposed that there would be;—and yet there was a vague feeling in her bosom that as he had been strong in expressing his objection to Mr. Twentyman there might have been something more to stir him than the memory of those old days at Bragton!

"To my thinking there is a sweetness about her which I have never seen equalled in any young woman." This was said by Lady Ushant to her nephew after Mary had gone to bed on the night before he left.

"One would suppose," he answered, "that you wanted me to ask her to be my wife."

"I never want anything of that kind, Reg. I never make in such matters,—or mar if I can help it."

"There is a man at Dillsborough wants to marry her."

"I can easily believe that there should be two or three. Who is the man?"

"Do you remember old Twentyman of Chowton?"

"He was our near neighbour. Of course I remember him. I can remember well when they bought the land."

"It is his son."

"Surely he can hardly be worthy of her, Reg."

"And yet they say he is very worthy. I have asked about him, and he is not a bad fellow. He keeps his money and has ideas of living decently. He doesn\'t drink or gamble. But he\'s not a gentleman or anything like one. I should think he never opens a book. Of course it would be a degradation."

"And what does Mary say herself?"

"I fancy she has refused him." Then he added after a pause, "Indeed I know she has."

"How should you know? Has she told you?" In answer to this he only nodded his head at the old lady. "There must have been close friendship, Reg, between you two when she told you that. I hope you have not made her give up one suitor by leading her to love another who does not mean to ask her."

"I certainly have not done that," said Reg. Men may often do much without knowing that they do anything, and such probably had been the case with Reginald Morton during the journey from Dillsborough to Cheltenham.

"What would her father wish?"

"They all want her to take the man."

"How can she do better?"

"Would you have her marry a man who is not a gentleman, whose wife will never be visited by other ladies;—in marrying whom she would go altogether down into another and a lower world?"

This was a matter on which Lady Ushant and her nephew had conversed often, and he thought he knew her to be thoroughly wedded to the privileges which she believed to be attached to her birth. With him the same feeling was almost the stronger because he was so well aware of the blot upon himself caused by the lowness of his own father\'s marriage. But a man, he held, could raise a woman to his own rank, whereas a woman must accept the level of her husband.

"Bread and meat and chairs and tables are very serious things, Reg."

"You would then recommend her to take this man, and pass altogether out of your own sphere?"

"What can I do for her? I am an old woman who will be dead probably before the first five years of her married life have passed over her. And as for recommending, I do not know enough to recommend anything. Does she like the man?"

"I am sure she would feel herself degraded by marrying him."

"I trust she will never live to feel herself degraded. I do not believe that she could do anything that she thought would degrade her. But I think that you and I had better leave her to herself in this matter." Further on in the same evening, or rather late in the night,—for they had then sat talking together for hours over the fire,—she made a direct statement to him. "When I die, Reg, I have but ￡5,000 to leave behind me, and this I have divided between you and her. I shall not tell her because I might do more harm than good. But you may know."

"That would make no difference to me," he said.

"Very likely not, but I wish you to know it. What troubles me is that she will have to pay so much out of it for legacy duty. I might leave it all to you and you could give it her." An honester or more religious or better woman than old Lady Ushant there was not in Cheltenham, but it never crossed her conscience that it would be wrong to cheat the revenue. It may be doubted whether any woman has ever been brought to such honesty as that.

On the next morning Morton went away without saying another word in private to Mary Masters and she was left to her quiet life with the old lady. To an ordinary visitor nothing could have been less exciting, for Lady Ushant very seldom went out and never entertained company. She was a tall thin old lady with bright eyes and grey hair and a face that was still pretty in spite of sunken eyes and............