There was such a mixture in Mary’s manner of tenderness and almost ferocity, that poor Beatrice could hardly follow her.  ’Turn away from you, Mary! no never; but this does make me unhappy.’

’It is better that you should know it all, and then you will not be led into fighting my battles again.  You cannot fight them so that I should win; I do love your brother; love him truly, fondly, tenderly.  I would wish to have him for my husband as you wish to have Mr Oriel.’

‘But, Mary, you cannot marry him!’

‘Why not?’ said she, in a loud voice.  ’Why can I not marry him?  If the priest says a blessing over us, shall we not be married as well as you and your husband?’

‘But you know he cannot marry unless his wife shall have money.’

’Money—­money; and he is to sell himself for money?  Oh, Trichy! do not you talk about money.  It is horrible.  But, Trichy, I will grant it—­I cannot marry him; but still, I love him.  He has a name, a place in the world, and fortune, family, high blood, position, everything.  He has all this, and I have nothing.  Of course I cannot marry him.  But yet I do love him.’

‘Are you engaged to him, Mary?’

‘He is not engaged to me; but I am to him.’

‘Oh, Mary, that is impossible!’

’It is not impossible:  it is the cast—­I am pledged to him; but he is not pledged to me.’

’But, Mary, don’t look at me in that way.  I do not quite understand you.  What is the good of your being engaged if you cannot marry him?’

’Good! there is no good.  But can I help it, if I love him?  Can I make myself not love him by just wishing it?  Oh, I would do it if I could.  But now you will understand why I shake my head when you talk of coming to your house.  Your ways and my ways must be different.’

Beatrice was startled, and, for a time, silenced.  What Mary said of the difference of their ways was quite true.  Beatrice had dearly loved her friend, and had thought of her with affection through all this long period in which they had been separated; but she had given her love and her thoughts on the understanding, as it were, that they were in unison as to the impropriety of Frank’s conduct.

She had always spoken, with a grave face, of Frank and his love as of a great misfortune, even to Mary herself; and her pity for Mary had been founded on the conviction of her innocence.  Now all those ideas had to be altered.  Mary owned her fault, confessed herself to be guilty of all that Lady Arabella so frequently laid to her charge, and confessed herself anxious to commit every crime as to which Beatrice had been ever so ready to defend her.

Had Beatrice up to this dreamed that Mary was in love with Frank, she would doubtless have sympathized with her more or less sooner or later.  As it was, is was beyond all doubt that she would soon sympathize with her.  But, at the moment, the suddenness of the declaration seemed to harden her heart, and she forgot, as it were, to speak tenderly to her friend.