’I don’t think Mr Oriel would like that at all, mamma.  You know he has made all his arrangements for his Sundays—­’

Pshaw!  The idea of the parson’s Sundays being allowed to have any bearing on such a matter as Frank’s wedding would now become!  Why, they would have—­how much?  Between twelve and fourteen thousand a year!  Lady Arabella, who had made her calculations a dozen times during the night, had never found it to be much less than the larger sum.  Mr Oriel’s Sundays indeed!

After much doubt, Lady Arabella acceded to her daughter’s suggestion, that Mary should be received at Greshamsbury instead of being called on at the doctor’s house.  ’If you think she won’t mind the coming up first,’ said her ladyship.  ’I certainly could receive her better here.  I should be more—­more—­more able, you know, to express what I feel.  We had better go into the big drawing-room to-day, Beatrice.  Will you remember to tell Mrs Richards?’

‘Oh, certainly,’ was Mary’s answer when Beatrice, with a voice a little trembling, proposed her to walk up to the house.  ’Certainly I will, if Lady Arabella will receive me;—­only, one thing, Trichy.’

‘What’s that, dearest?’

‘Frank will think that I come after him.’

’Never mind what he thinks.  To tell you the truth, Mary, I often call on Patience for the sake of finding Caleb.  That’s all fair now, you know.’

Mary very quietly got put on her straw bonnet, and said she was ready to go up to the house.  Beatrice was a little fluttered, and showed it.  Mary was, perhaps, a good deal fluttered, but she did not show it.  She had thought a good deal about her first interview with Lady Arabella, of her first return to the house; but she had resolved to carry herself as though the matter were easy to her.  She would not allow it to be seen that she felt that she brought with her to Greshamsbury, comfort, ease, and renewed opulence.

So she put on her straw bonnet and walked up with Beatrice.  Everybody about the place had already heard the news.  The old woman at the lodge curtsied low to her; the gardener, who was mowing the lawn.  The butler, who opened the front door—­he must have been watching Mary’s approach—­had manifestly put on a clean white neckcloth for the occasion.

‘God bless you once more, Miss Thorne!’ said the old man, in a half-whisper.  Mary was somewhat troubled, for everything seemed, in a manner, to bow down before her.  And why should not everything bow down before her, seeing that she was in truth the owner of Greshamsbury?

And then a servant in livery would open the big drawing-room door.  This rather upset both Mary and Beatrice.  It became almost impossible for Mary to enter the room just as she would have done two years ago; but she got through the difficulty with much self-control.

‘Mamma, here’s Mary,’ said Beatrice.

Nor was Lady Arabella quite mistress of herself, although she had studied minutely how to bear herself.