How he had contrived to be off with the old love and so soon on with the new, or rather, to be off with the new love and again on with the old, we will not stop to inquire.  Had Lady Arabella, in truth, known all her son’s doings in this way, could she have guessed how very nigh he had approached the iniquity of old Mr Bateson, and to the folly of young Mr Everbeery, she would in truth have been in a hurry to send him off to Courcy Castle and Miss Dunstable.  Some days before the commencement of our story, young Frank had sworn in sober earnest—­in what he intended for his most sober earnest, his most earnest sobriety—­that he loved Mary Thorne with a love for which words could find no sufficient expression—­with a love that could never die, never grow dim, never become less, which no opposition on the part of others could extinguish, which no opposition on her part could repel; that he might, could, would, and should have her for his wife, and that if she told him she didn’t love him, he would—­

’Oh, oh!  Mary; do you love me?  Don’t you love me?  Won’t you love me?  Say you will.  Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? won’t you? do you? don’t you?  Come now, you have a right to give a fellow an answer.’

With such eloquence had the heir of Greshamsbury, when not yet twenty-one years of age, attempted to possess himself of the affections of the doctor’s niece.  And yet three days afterwards he was quite ready to flirt with Miss Oriel.

If such things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?

And what had Mary said when those fervent protestations of an undying love had been thrown at her feet?  Mary, it must be remembered, was very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so often said before, ‘Women grow on the sunny side of the wall.’  Though Frank was only a boy, it behoved Mary to be something more than a girl.  Frank might be allowed, without laying himself open to much reproach, to throw all of what he believed to be his heart into a protestation of what he believed to be love; but Mary was in duty bound to be more thoughtful, more reticent, more aware of the facts of their position, more careful of her own feelings, and more careful also of his.

And yet she could not put him down as another young lady might put down another young gentleman.  It is very seldom that a young man, unless he be tipsy, assumes an unwelcome familiarity in his early acquaintance with any girl; but when acquaintance has been long and intimate, familiarities must follow as a matter of course.  Frank and Mary had been so much together in his holidays, had so constantly consorted together as boys and girls, that, as regarded her, he had not that innate fear of a woman which represses a young man’s tongue; and she was so used to his good-humour, his fun, and high jovial spirits, and was, withal, so fond of them and him, that it was very difficult for her to mark with accurate feeling, and stop with reserved brow, the shade of change from a boy’s liking to a man’s love.