It will of course be remembered that Mary’s interview with the other girls at Greshamsbury took place some two or three days subsequently to Frank’s generous offer of his hand and heart. Mary had quite made up her mind that the whole thing was to be regarded as a folly, and that it was not to be spoken of to any one; but yet her heart was sore enough. She was full of pride, and yet she knew she must bow her neck to the pride of others. Being, as she was herself, nameless, she could not but feel a stern, unflinching antagonism, the antagonism of a democrat, to the pretensions of others who were blessed with that of which she had been deprived. She had this feeling; and yet, of all the things that she coveted, she most coveted that, for glorying in which, she was determined to heap scorn on others. She said to herself, proudly, that God’s handiwork was the inner man, the inner woman, the naked creature animated by a living soul; that all other adjuncts were but man’s clothing for the creature; all others, whether stitched by tailors or contrived by kings. Was it not within her capacity to do as nobly, to love as truly, to worship her God in heaven with as perfect a faith, and her god on earth with as leal a troth, as though blood had descended to her purely through scores of purely born progenitors? So to herself she spoke; and yet, as she said it, she knew that were she a man, such a man as the heir of Greshamsbury should be, nothing would tempt her to sully her children’s blood by mating herself with any one that was base born. She felt that were she Augusta Gresham, no Mr Moffat, let his wealth be what it might, should win her hand unless he too could tell of family honours and a line of ancestors.

And so, with a mind at war with itself, she came forth armed to do battle against the world’s prejudices, those prejudices she herself loved so well.

And was she thus to give up her old affections, her feminine loves, because she found that she was a cousin to nobody? Was she no longer to pour out her heart to Beatrice Gresham with all the girlish volubility of an equal? Was she to be severed from Patience Oriel, and banished — or rather was she to banish herself — from the free place she had maintained in the various youthful female conclaves within that parish of Greshamsbury?

Hitherto, what Mary Thorne would say, what Miss Thorne suggested in such and such a matter, was quite as frequently asked as any opinion from Augusta Gresham — quite as frequently, unless when it chanced that any of the De Courcy girls were at the house. Was this to be given up? These feelings had grown up among them since they were children, and had not hitherto been questioned among them. Now they were questioned by Mary Thorne. Was she in fact to find that her position had been a false one, and must be changed?

Such had been her feelings when she protested that she would not be Augusta Gresham’s bridesmaid, and offered to put her neck beneath Beatrice’s foot; when she drove the Lady Margaretta out of the room, and gave her own opinion as to the proper grammatical construction of the word humble; such also had been her feelings when she kept her hand so rigidly to herself while Frank held the dining-room door open for her to pass through.

‘Patience Oriel,’ said she to herself, ‘can talk to him of her father and mother: let Patience take his hand; let her talk to him;’ and then, not long afterwards, she saw that Patience did talk to him; and seeing it, she walked along silent, among some of the old people, and with much effort did prevent a tear from falling down her cheek.

But why was the tear in her eye? Had she not proudly told Frank that his love-making was nothing but a boy’s silly rhapsody? Had she not said so while she had yet reason to hope that her blood was as good as his own? Had she not seen at a glance that his love tirade was worthy of ridicule, and of no other notice? And yet there was a tear now in her eye because this boy, whom she had scolded from her, whose hand, offered in pure friendship, she had just refused, because he, so rebuffed by her, had carried his fun and gallantry to one who would be less cross to him!

She could hear as she was walking, that while Lady Margaretta was with them, their voices were loud and merry; and her sharp ear could also hear, when Lady Margaretta left them, that Frank’s voice became low and tender. So she walked on, saying nothing, looking straight before her, and by degrees separating herself from all the others.

The Greshamsbury grounds were on one side somewhat too closely hemmed in by the village. On this side was a path running the length of one of the streets of the village; and far down the path, near the extremity of the gardens, and near also to a wicket-gate which led out into the village, and which could be opened from the inside, was a seat, under a big yew-tree, from which, through a breach in the houses, might be seen the parish church, standing in the park on the other side. Hither Mary walked alone, and here she seated herself, determined to get rid of her tears and their traces before she again showed herself to the world.

‘I shall never be happy here again,’ said she to herself; ‘never. I am no longer one of them, and I cannot live among them unless I am so.’ And then an idea came across her mind that she hated Patience Oriel; and then, instantly another idea followed — quick as such thoughts are quick — that she did not hate Patience Oriel at all; that she liked her, nay, loved her; that Patience Oriel was a sweet girl; and that she hoped the time would come when she might see her the lady of Greshamsbury. And then the tear, which had been no whit controlled, which indeed had now made itself master of her, came to a head, and, bursting through the floodgates of the eye, came rolling down, and in its fall, wetted her hand as it lay on her lap. ‘What a fool! what an idiot! what an empty-headed cowardly fool I am!’ said she, springing up from the bench on her feet.

As she did so, she heard voices close to her, at the little gate. They were those of her uncle and Frank Gresham.

‘God bless you, Frank!’ said the doctor, as he passed out of the grounds. ‘You will excuse a lecture, won’t you, from so old a friend?— though you are a man now, and discreet of course, by Act of Parliament.’

‘Indeed I will, doctor,’ said Frank. ‘I will excuse a longer lecture than that from you.’

‘At any rate it won’t be tonight,’ said the doctor, as he disappeared. ‘And if you see Mary, tell her that I am obliged to go; and that I will send Janet down to fetch her.’

Now Janet was the doctor’s ancient maid-servant.

Mary could not move on, without being perceived; she therefore stood still till she heard the click of the door, and then began walking rapidly back to the house by the path which had brought her thither. The moment, however, that she did so, she found that she was followed; and in a very few moments Frank was alongside of her.

‘Oh, Mary!’ said he, calling to her, but not loudly, before he quite overtook her, ‘how odd that I should come across you just when I have a message for you! and why are you all alone?’

Mary’s first impulse was to reiterate her command to him to call her no more by her Christian name; but her second impulse told her that such an injunction at the present moment would not be prudent on her part. The traces of her tears were still there; and she well knew that a very little, the slightest show of tenderness on his part, the slightest effort on her own to appear indifferent, would bring down more than one other such intruder. It would, moreover, be better for her to drop all outward sign that she remembered what had taken place. So long, then, as he and she were at Greshamsbury together, he should call her Mary if he pleased. He would soon be gone; and while he remained, she would keep out of his way.

‘Your uncle has been obliged to go away to see an old woman at Silverbridge.’

‘At Silverbridge! why, he won’t be back all night. Why could not the old woman send for Dr Century?’

‘I suppose she thought two old women could not get on well together.’

Mary could not help smiling. She did not like her uncle going off so late on such a journey; but it was always felt a triumph when he was invited into the strongholds of the enemies.

‘And Janet is to come over for you. However, I told him it was quite unnecessary to disturb another old woman, for that I should see you home.’

‘Oh, no, Mr Gresham; indeed you’ll not do that.’

‘Indeed, and indeed, I shall.’

‘What! on this great day, when every lady is looking for you, and talking of you. I suppose you want to set the countess against me for ever. Think, too, how angry Lady Arabella will be if you are absent on such and errand as this.’

‘To hear you talk, Mary, one would think that you were going to Silverbridge yourself.’

‘Perhaps I am.’

‘If I did not go with you, some of the other fellows would. John, or George —’

‘Good gracious, Frank! Fancy either of the Mr De Courceys walking home with me!’

She had forgotten herself, and the strict propriety on which she had resolved, in the impossibility of forgoing her little joke against the De Courcy grandeur; she had forgotten herself, and had called him Frank in her old, former, eager, free tone of voice; and then, remembering she had done so, she drew herself up, but her lips, and determined to be doubly on her guard in the future.

‘Well, it shall be either one of them, or I,’ said Frank: ‘perhaps you would prefer my cousin George to me?’

‘I should prefer Janet to either, seeing that with her I should not suffer the extreme nuisance of knowing that I was a bore.’

‘A bore! Mary, to me?’

‘Yes, Mr Gresham, a bore to you. Having to walk home through the mud with village young ladies is boring. All gentlemen feel it so.’

‘There is no mud; if there were you would not be allowed to walk at all.’

‘Oh! village young ladies never care for such things, though fashionable gentlemen do.’

‘I would carry you home, Mary, if it would do you a service,’ said Frank, with considerable pathos in his voice.

‘Oh, dear me! pray do not, Mr Gresham. I should not like it at all,’ said she: ‘a wheelbarrow would be preferable to that.’

‘Of course. Anything would be preferable to my arm, I know.’

‘Certainly; anything in the way of a conveyance. If I were to act baby; and you were to act nurse, it really would not be comfortable for either of us.’

Frank Gresham felt disconcerted, though he hardly knew why. He was striving to say something tender to his lady-love; but every word that he spoke she turned into joke. Mary did not answer him coldly or unkindly; but, nevertheless, he was displeased. One does not like to have one’s little offerings of sentimental service turned into burlesque when one is in love in earnest. Mary’s jokes had appeared so easy too; they seemed to come from a heart so little troubled. This, also, was cause of vexation to Frank. If he could but have known it all, he would, perhaps, have been better pleased.

He determined not to be absolutely laughed out of his tenderness. When, three days ago, he had been repulsed, he had gone away owning to himself that he had been beaten; owning so much, but owning it with great sorrow and much shame. Since that he had come of age; since that he had made speeches, and speeches had been made to him; since that he had gained courage by flirting with Patience Oriel. No faint heart ever won a fair lady, as he was well aware; he resolved, therefore, that his heart should not be faint, and that he would see whether the fair lady might not be won by becoming audacity.

‘Mary,’ said he, stopping in the path — for they were now near the spot where it broke out upon the lawn, and they could already hear the voices of the guests —‘Mary, you are unkind to me.’

‘I am not aware of it, Mr Gresham; but if I am, do not you retaliate. I am weaker than you, and in your power; do not you, therefore, be unkind to me.’

‘You refused my hand just now,’ continued he. ‘Of all the people here at Greshamsbury, you are the only one that has not wished me joy; the only one —’

‘I do wish you joy; I will wish you joy: there is my hand,’ and she frankly put out her ungloved hand. ‘You are quite man enough to understand me: there is my hand; I trust you use it only as it is meant to be used.’

He took it in his hand and pressed it cordially, as he might have done that of any other friend in such a case; and then — did not drop it as he should have done. He was not a St Anthony, and it was most imprudent in Miss Thorne to subject him to such a temptation.

‘Mary,’ said he; ‘dear Mary! dearest Mary! if you did but know how I love you!’

As he said this, holding Miss Thorne’s hand he stood on the pathway with his back towards the lawn and house, and, therefore, did not at first see his sister Augusta, who had just at that moment come upon them. Mary blushed up to her straw hat, and, with a quick jerk, recovered her hand. Augusta saw the motion, and Mary saw that Augusta had seen it.

From my tedious way of telling it, the reader will be led to imagine that the hand-squeezing had been protracted to a duration quite incompatible with any objection to such an arrangement on the part of the lady; but the fault is mine: in no part hers. Were I possessed of a quick spasmodic style of narrative, I should have been able to include it all — Frank’s misbehaviour, Mary’s immediate anger, Augusta’s arrival, and keen, Argus-eyed inspection, and then Mary’s subsequent misery — in five words and half a dozen dashes and inverted commas. The thing would have been so told; for, to do Mary justice, she did not leave her hand in Frank’s a moment longer than she could help herself.

Frank, feeling the hand withdrawn, and hearing, when it was too late, the step on the gravel, turned sharply round. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it, Augusta? Well, what do you want?’

Augusta was not naturally very ill-natured, seeing that in her veins the high De Courcy blood was somewhat tempered by an admixture of the Gresham attributes; nor was she predisposed to make her brother her enemy by publishing to the world any of his little tender peccadilloes; but she could not but bethink herself of what her aunt had been saying as to the danger of any such encounters as that she just now had beheld; she could not but start at seeing her brother thus, on the very brink of the precipice of which the countess had specially forewarned her mother. She, Augusta, was, as she well knew, doing her duty by her family by marrying a tailor’s son for whom she did not care a chip, seeing that the tailor’s son was possessed of untold wealth. Now when one member of a household is making a struggle for a family, it is painful to see the benefit of that struggle negatived by the folly of another member. The future Mrs Moffat did feel aggrieved by the fatuity of the young heir, and, consequently, took upon herself to look as much like her Aunt De Courcy as she could do.

‘Well, what is it?’ said Frank, looking rather disgusted. ‘What makes you stick your chin up and look in that way?’ Frank had hitherto been rather a despot among his sisters, and forgot that the eldest of them was now passing altogether from under his sway to that of the tailor’s son.

‘Frank,’ said Augusta, in a tone of ............