Mary, therefore, found herself utterly separated from Beatrice.  She was not even able to learn what Beatrice would think, or did think, of the engagement as it now stood.  She could not even explain to her friend that love had been too strong for her, and endeavour to get some comfort from that friend’s absolution from her sin.  This estrangement was now carried so far that she and Beatrice did not even meet on neutral ground.  Lady Arabella made it known to Miss Oriel that her daughter could not meet Mary Thorne, even as strangers meet; and it was made known to others also.  Mrs Yates Umbleby, and her dear friend Miss Gushing, to whose charming tea-parties none of the Greshamsbury ladies went above once in a twelvemonth, talked through the parish of this distressing difficulty.  They would have been so happy to have asked dear Mary Thorne, only the Greshamsbury ladies did not approve.

Mary was thus tabooed from all society in the place in which a twelvemonth since she had been, of all its denizens, perhaps the most courted.  In those days, no bevy of Greshamsbury young ladies had fairly represented the Greshamsbury young ladyhood if Mary Thorne was not there.  Now she was excluded from all such bevies.  Patience did not quarrel with her, certainly;—­came to see her frequently;—­invited her to walk;—­invited her frequently to the parsonage.  But Mary was shy of acceding to such invitations and at last frankly told her friend Patience, that she would not again break bread in Greshamsbury in any house in which she was not thought fit to meet the other guests who habitually resorted there.

In truth, both the doctor and his niece were very sore, but there were of that temperament that keeps all its soreness to itself.  Mary walked out by herself boldly, looking at least as though she were indifferent to all the world.  She was, indeed, hardly treated.  Young ladies’ engagements are generally matters of profoundest secrecy, and are hardly known of by their near friends till marriage is a thing settled.  But all the world knew of Mary’s engagement within a month of that day on which she had neglected to expel Frank’s finger from her hand; it had been told openly through the country-side that she had confessed her love for the young squire.  Now it is disagreeable for a young lady to walk about under such circumstances, especially so when she has no female friend to keep her in countenance, more especially so when the gentleman is such importance in the neighbourhood as Frank was in that locality.  It was a matter of moment to every farmer, and every farmer’s wife, which bride Frank should marry of those bespoken for him; Mary, namely, or Money.  Every yokel about the place had been made to understand that, by some feminine sleight of hand, the doctor’s niece had managed to trap Master Frank, and that Master Frank had been sent out of the way so that he might, if yet possible, break through the trapping.  All this made life rather unpleasant for her.