‘Oh, Mary, dear Mary; what can I say to you?’ and then, with a handkerchief to her eyes, she ran forward and hid her face in Miss Thorne’s shoulders.  ’What can I say—­can you forgive my anxiety for my son?’

‘How do you do, Lady Arabella?’ said Mary.

’My daughter! my child! my Frank’s own bride!  Oh, Mary! oh, my child!  If I have seemed unkind to you, it has been through love to him.’

‘All these things are over now,’ said Mary.  ’Mr Gresham told me yesterday that I should be received as Frank’s future wife; and so, you see, I have come.’  And then she slipped through Lady Arabella’s arms, and sat down, meekly down, on a chair.  In five minutes she had escaped with Beatrice into the school-room, and was kissing the children, and turning over the new trousseau.  They were, however, soon interrupted, and there was, perhaps, some other kissing besides that of the children.

‘You have no business here at all, Frank,’ said Beatrice.  ’Has he, Mary?’

‘None in the world, I should think.’

’See what he has done to my poplin; I hope you won’t have your things treated so cruelly.  He’ll be careful enough about them.’

‘Is Oriel a good hand at packing up finery—­eh, Beatrice,’ said Frank.

‘He is, at any rate, too well-behaved to spoil it.’  Thus Mary was again made at home on the household of Greshamsbury.

Lady Arabella did not carry out her little plan of delaying the Oriel wedding.  Her idea had been to add some grandeur to it, in order to make it a more fitting precursor of that other greater wedding which was to follow soon in its wake.  But this, with the assistance of the countess, she found herself able to do without interfering with poor Mr Oriel’s Sunday arrangements.  The countess herself, with the Ladies Alexandrina and Margaretta, now promised to come, even to the first affair; and for the other, the whole De Courcy family would turn out, count and countess, lords and ladies, Honourable Georges and Honourable Johns.  What honour, indeed, could be too great to show to a bride who had fourteen thousand a year in her own right, or to a cousin, who had done his duty by securing such a bride to himself!

‘If the duke be in the country, I am sure he will be happy to come,’ said the countess.  ’Of course, he will be talking to Frank about politics.  I suppose the squire won’t expect Frank to belong to the old school now.’

’Frank, of course, will judge for himself, Rosina;—­with his position, you know!’ And so things were settled at Courcy Castle.

And then Beatrice was wedded and carried off to the Lakes.  Mary, as she had promised, did stand near her; but not exactly in the gingham frock of which she had once spoken.  She wore on that occasion—­But it will be too much, perhaps, to tell the reader what she wore as Beatrice’s bridesmaid, seeing that a couple of pages, at least, must be devoted to her marriage-dress, and seeing, also, that we have only a few pages to finish everything; the list of visitors, the marriage settlements, the dress, and all included.