The tendency to finding matter for hero-worship in Mary’s endurance was much stronger with Beatrice than with Miss Oriel.  Miss Oriel was the elder, and naturally less afflicted with the sentimentation of romance.  She had thrown herself into Mary’s arms because she had seen that it was essentially necessary for Mary’s comfort that she should do so.  She was anxious to make her friend smile, and to smile with her.  Beatrice was quite as true in her sympathy; but she rather wished that she and Mary might weep in unison, shed mutual tears, and break their hearts together.

Patience had spoken of Frank’s love as a misfortune, of his conduct as erroneous, and to be excused only by his youth, and had never appeared to surmise that Mary also might be in love as well as he.  But to Beatrice the affair was a tragic difficulty, admitting of no solution; a Gordian knot, not to be cut; a misery now and for ever.  She would always talk about Frank when she and Mary were alone; and, to speak the truth, Mary did not stop her as she perhaps should have done.

As for a marriage between them, that was impossible; Beatrice was well sure of that:  it was Frank’s unfortunate destiny that he must marry money—­money, and, as Beatrice sometimes thoughtlessly added, cutting Mary to the quick,—­money and family also.  Under such circumstances a marriage between them was quite impossible; but not the less did Beatrice declare, that she would have loved Mary as her sister-in-law had it been possible; and how worthy Frank was of a girl’s love, had such love been possible.

‘It is so cruel,’ Beatrice would say; ’so very, very, cruel. 
 You would have suited him in every way.’

’Nonsense, Trichy; I should have suited him in no possible way at all; nor he me.’

‘Oh, but you would—­exactly.  Papa loves you so well.’

‘And mamma; that would have been so nice.’

‘Yes; and mamma, too—­that is, had you had a fortune,’ said the daughter, naively.  ‘She always liked you personally, always.’

‘Did she?’

‘Always.  And we all love you so.’

‘Especially Lady Alexandrina.’

’That would not have signified, for Frank cannot endure the De Courcys himself.’

’My dear, it does not matter one straw whom your brother can endure or not endure just at present.  His character is to be formed, and his tastes, and his heart also.’

‘Oh, Mary!—­his heart.’

’Yes, his heart; not the fact of his having a heart.  I think he has a heart; but he himself does not yet understand it.’

‘Oh, Mary! you do not know him.’

Such conversations were not without danger to poor Mary’s comfort.  It came soon to be the case that she looked rather for this sort of sympathy from Beatrice, than for Miss Oriel’s pleasant but less piquant gaiety.