‘No,’ said she, very quietly, as though the position was one quite a matter of course.  ’I don’t think I have been very much to blame.  There will be misfortunes sometimes when nobody is to blame.’

‘I do not quite understand it all,’ said the squire; ‘but if Frank—­’

‘Oh! we will not talk about him,’ said she, still laughing gently.

‘You can understand, Mary, how dear he must be to me; but if—­’

’Mr Gresham, I would not for worlds be the cause of any unpleasantness between you and him.’

‘But I cannot bear to think that we have banished you, Mary.’

‘It cannot be helped.  Things will all come right in time.’

‘But you will be lonely here.’

’Oh!  I shall get over all that.  Here, you know, Mr Gresham, “I am monarch of all I survey”; and there is a great deal in that.’

The squire did not catch her meaning, but a glimmering of it did reach him.  It was competent to Lady Arabella to banish her from Greshamsbury; it was within the sphere of the squire’s duties to prohibit his son from an imprudent match; it was for the Greshams to guard their Greshamsbury treasure as best they could within their own territories:  but let them beware that they did not attack her on hers.  In obedience to the first expression of their wishes, she had submitted herself to this public mark of their disapproval because she had seen at once, with her clear intellect, that they were only doing that which her conscience must approve.  Without a murmur, therefore, she consented to be pointed at as the young lady who had been turned out of Greshamsbury because of the young squire.  She had no help for it.  But let them take care that they did not go beyond that.  Outside those Greshamsbury gates she and Frank Gresham, she and Lady Arabella met on equal terms; let them each fight their own battle.

The squire kissed her forehead affectionately and took his leave, feeling somehow, that he had been excused and pitied, and made much of; whereas he had called on his young neighbour with the intention of excusing, and pitying, and making much of her.  He was not quite comfortable as he left the house; but, nevertheless, he was sufficiently honest-hearted to own to himself that Mary Thorne was a fine girl.  Only that it was so absolutely necessary that Frank should marry money—­and only, also, that poor Mary was such a birthless foundling in the world’s esteem—­only, but for these things, what a wife she would have made for that son of his!

To one person only did she talk freely on the subject, and that one was Patience Oriel; and even with her the freedom was rather of the mind than of the heart.  She never said a word of her feeling with reference to Frank, but she said much of her position in the village, and of the necessity she was under to keep out of the way.

‘It is very hard,’ said Patience, ’that the offence should be all with him, and the punishment all with you.’