“I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of him,” said Fred.

“Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred,” said Mary, getting serious again.  “I don’t know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous in you not to see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose that we might speak freely.  I am disappointed that you should be so blind to his delicate feeling.”

There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with the engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from Mary’s words and manner.  The result of the conversation was on the whole more painful to Mary:  inevitably her attention had taken a new attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations.  She was in a position in which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr. Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much honored, is always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.  To have a reason for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to be always clear that she loved Fred best.  When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives.  And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

“Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this,” Mary said to herself, with a smile curling her lips.  It was impossible to help fleeting visions of another kind—­new dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence.  But these things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.

CHAPTER LVIII.

“For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change: 
In many’s looks the false heart’s history
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange: 
But Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell: 
Whate’er thy thoughts or thy heart’s workings be
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.” 

          
                                                          —­SHAKESPEARE:  Sonnets.

At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond, she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal which he foresaw.  She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as well as eventful.  Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness.  This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or rudely told him that she would do as she liked.