And what might be the feelings of her heart when she so sententiously told her uncle that Frank had been foolish?  She was of the same age with him; as impressionable, though more powerful in hiding such impressions,—­as all women should be; her heart was as warm, her blood as full of life, her innate desire for the companionship of some much-loved object as strong as his.  Frank had been foolish in avowing his passion.  No such folly as that could be laid at her door.  But had she been proof against the other folly?  Had she been able to walk heart-whole by his side, while he chatted his commonplaces about love?  Yes, they are commonplaces when we read them in novels; common enough, too, to some of us when we write them; but they are by no means commonplace when first heard by a young girl in the rich, balmy fragrance of July evening stroll.

Nor are they commonplaces when so uttered for the first or second time at least, or perhaps the third.  ’Tis a pity that so heavenly a pleasure should pall upon the senses.

If it was so that Frank’s folly had been listened to with a certain amount of pleasure, Mary did not even admit so much to herself.  But why should it have been otherwise?  Why should she have been less prone to love than he was?  Had he not everything which girls do love? which girls should love? which God created noble, beautiful, all but godlike, in order that women, all but goddesslike, might love?  To love thoroughly, truly, heartily, with her whole body, soul, heart, and strength; should not that be counted for a merit in a woman?  And yet we are wont to make a disgrace of it.  We do so most unnaturally, most unreasonably; for we expect our daughters to get themselves married off our hands.  When the period of that step comes, then love is proper enough; but up to that—­before that—­as regards all those preliminary passages which must, we suppose, be necessary—­in all those it becomes a young lady to be icy-hearted as a river-god in winter.

    ’O whistle and I’ll come to you my lad! 
     O whistle and I’ll come to you my lad! 
     Tho’ father and mither and a’should go mad
     O whistle and I’ll come to you my lad!’

This is the kind of love which a girl should feel before she puts her hand proudly in that of her lover, and consents that they two shall be made one flesh.

Mary felt no such love as this.  She, too, had some inner perception of that dread destiny by which it behoved Frank Gresham to be forewarned.  She, too—­though she had never heard so much said in words—­had an almost instinctive knowledge that his fate required him to marry money.  Thinking over this in her own way, she was not slow to convince herself that it was out of the question that she should allow herself to love Frank Gresham.  However well her heart might be inclined to such a feeling, it was her duty to repress it.  She resolved, therefore, to do so; and she sometimes flattered herself that she had kept her resolution.