perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of wondrous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance, she could talk, when the fit came on her, with an energy which in truth surprised those who did not know her; aye, and sometimes those who did.  Energy! nay, it was occasionally a concentration of passion, which left her for the moment perfectly unconscious of all other cares but solicitude for that subject which she might then be advocating.

All her friends, including the doctor, had at times been made unhappy by this vehemence of character; but yet it was to that very vehemence that she owed it that all her friends loved her.  It had once nearly banished her in early years from the Greshamsbury schoolroom; and yet it ended in making her claim to remain there so strong, that Lady Arabella could no longer oppose it, even when she had the wish to do so.

A new French governess had lately come to Greshamsbury, and was, or was to be, a great pet with Lady Arabella, having all the great gifts with which a governess can be endowed, and being also a protege from the castle.  The castle, in Greshamsbury parlance, always meant that of Courcy.  Soon after this a valued little locket belonging to Augusta Gresham was missing.  The French governess had objected to its being worn in the schoolroom, and it had been sent up to the bedroom by a young servant-girl, the daughter of a small farmer on the estate.  The locket was missing, and after a while, a considerable noise in the matter having been made, was found, by the diligence of the governess, somewhere among the belongings of the English servant.  Great was the anger of Lady Arabella, loud were the protestations of the girl, mute the woe of her father, piteous the tears of her mother, inexorable the judgment of the Greshamsbury world.  But something occurred, it matters now not what, to separate Mary Thorne in opinion from that world at large.  Out she then spoke, and to her face accused the governess of the robbery.  For two days Mary was in disgrace almost as deep as that of the farmer’s daughter.  But she was neither quiet or dumb in her disgrace.  When Lady Arabella would not hear her, she went to Mr Gresham.  She forced her uncle to move in the matter.  She gained over to her side, one by one, the potentates of the parish, and ended by bringing Mam’selle Larron down on her knees with a confession of the facts.  From that time Mary Thorne was dear to the tenantry of Greshamsbury; and specially dear to one small household, where a rough-spoken father of a family was often heard to declare, that for Miss Mary Thorne he’d face man or magistrate, duke or devil.

And so Mary Thorne grew up under the doctor’s eye, and at the beginning of our tale she was one of the guests assembled at Greshamsbury on the coming of age of the heir, she herself having then arrived at the same period of her life.