The doctor’s mother trembled; for that a good man should step in was exactly what she feared.  “That is a thing that can never be depended upon,” she said; “and marriages made out of compassion are just as bad as mercenary marriages.  Oh no, my dear Mrs. Bowyer, Mary has a great deal of character.  You should put more confidence in her than that.  No doubt she will be much cast down at first, but when she knows, she will rise to the occasion and show what is in her.”

“Poor little thing! what is in a girl of eighteen, and one that has lain on the roses and fed on the lilies all her life?  Oh, I could find it in my heart to say a great deal about old Lady Mary that would not be pleasant!  Why did she bring her up so if she did not mean to provide for her?  I think she must have been at heart a wicked old woman.”

“Oh no! we must not say that.  I dare say, as my son says, she always meant to do it sometime-”

“Sometime! how long did she expect to live, I wonder?”

“Well,” said the doctor’s mother, “it is wonderful how little old one feels sometimes within one’s self, even when one is well up in years.”  She was of the faction of the old, instead of being like Mrs. Bowyer, who was not much over thirty, of the faction of the young.  She could make excuses for Lady Mary; but she thought that it was unkind to bring the poor little girl here in ignorance of her real position, and in the way of men who, though old enough to know better, were still capable of folly,—­as what man is not, when a girl of eighteen is concerned?  “I hope,” she added, “that the earl will do something for her.  Certainly he ought to, when he knows all that his grandmother did, and what her intentions must have been.  He ought to make her a little allowance; that is the least he can do,—­not, to be sure, such a provision as we all hoped Lady Mary was going to make for her, but enough to live upon.  Mr. Furnival, I believe, has written to him to that effect.”

“Hush!” cried the vicar’s wife; indeed she had been making signs to the other lady, who stood with her back to the door, for some moments.  Mary had come in while this conversation was going on.  She had not paid any attention to it; and yet her ear had been caught by the names of Lady Mary, and the earl, and Mr. Furnival.  For whom was it that the earl should make an allowance enough to live upon? whom Lady Mary had not provided for, and whom Mr. Furnival had written about?  When she sat down to the needle-work in which she was helping Mrs. Vicar, it was not to be supposed that she should not ponder these words,—­for some time very vaguely, not perceiving the meaning of them; and then with a start she woke up to perceive that there must be something meant, some one,—­even some one she knew.  And then the needle dropped out of the girl’s hand, and the pinafore she was making fell on the floor.  Some one! it must be herself they meant!  Who but she could be the subject of that earnest conversation?