So the days of the doctor’s absence were passed, and so also the first week after his return.  During this week it was almost daily necessary that the squire should be with him.  The doctor was now the legal holder of Sir Roger’s property, and, as such, the holder also of all the mortgages on Mr Gresham’s property; and it was natural that they should be much together.  The doctor would not, however, go up to Greshamsbury on any other than medical business; and it therefore became necessary that the squire should be a good deal at the doctor’s house.

Then the Lady Arabella became unhappy in her mind.  Frank, it was true, was away at Cambridge, and had been successfully kept out of Mary’s way since the suspicion of danger had fallen upon Lady Arabella’s mind.  Frank was away, and Mary was systematically banished, with due acknowledgement from all the powers in Greshamsbury.  But this was not enough for Lady Arabella as long as her daughter still habitually consorted with the female culprit, and as long as her husband consorted with the male culprit.  It seemed to Lady Arabella at this moment as though, in banishing Mary from the house, she had in effect banished herself from the most intimate of the Greshamsbury social circles.  She magnified in her own mind the importance of the conferences between the girls, and was not without some fear that the doctor might be talking the squire over into very dangerous compliance.

Her object was to break of all confidential intercourse between Beatrice and Mary, and to interrupt, as far as she could do it, that between the doctor and the squire.  This, it may be said, could be more easily done by skilful management within her own household.  She had, however, tried that and failed.  She had said much to Beatrice as to the imprudence of her friendship with Mary, and she had done this purposely before the squire; injudiciously however—­for the squire had immediately taken Mary’s part, and had declared that he had no wish to see a quarrel between his family and that of the doctor; that Mary Thorne was in every way a good girl, and an eligible friend for his own child; and had ended by declaring, that he would not have Mary persecuted for Frank’s fault.  This had not been the end, nor nearly the end of what had been said on the matter at Greshamsbury; but the end, when it came, came in this wise, that Lady Arabella determined to say a few words to the doctor as to the expediency of forbidding familiar intercourse between Mary and any of the Greshamsbury people.

With this view Lady Arabella absolutely bearded the lion in his den, the doctor in his shop.  She had heard that both Mary and Beatrice were to pass a certain afternoon at the parsonage, and took that opportunity of calling at the doctor’s house.  A period of many years had passed since she had last so honoured that abode.  Mary, indeed, had been so much one of her own family that the ceremony of calling on her had never been thought necessary; and thus, unless Mary had been absolutely ill, there would have been nothing to bring her ladyship to the house.  All this she knew would add to the importance of the occasion, and she judged it prudent to make the occasion as important as it might well be.