‘Yes,—­at last.’

On this occasion time did not envy them.  The long afternoons of spring had come, and as Tregear had reached the house between four and five they were able to go out together before the sun set.  ‘No,’ she said when he came to inquire as to her life during the last twelve months, ’you had not much to be afraid of as to my forgetting.’

‘But when everything was against me?’

’One thing was not against you.  You ought to have been sure of that.’

’And so I was.  And yet I felt that I ought not to have been sure.  Sometimes, in my solitude, I used to think that I myself had been wrong.  I began to doubt whether under any circumstances I could have been justified in asking your father’s daughter to be my wife.’

‘Because of his rank?’

‘Not so much his rank as his money.’

‘Ought that to be considered?’

‘A poor man who marries a rich woman will always be suspected.’

’Because people are so mean and poor-spirited; and because they think that money is more than anything else.  It should be nothing at all in such matters.  I don’t know how it can be anything.  They have been saying that to me all along,—­as though one were to stop to think whether one was rich or poor.’  Tregear, when this was said, could not but remember a time not very much prior to that which Mary had not stopped to think, neither for a while had he and Mabel.  ‘I suppose it was worse for me than for you,’ she added.

‘I hope not.’

’But it was, Frank; and therefore I ought to have made it up to me now.  It was very bad to be alone here, particularly when I felt that papa always looked at me as though I were a sinner.  He did not mean it, but he could not help looking at me like that.  As there was nobody to whom I could say a word.’

‘It was pretty much the same with me.’

’Yes; but you were not offending a father who could not keep himself from looking reproaches at you.  I was like a boy at school who had been put into Coventry.  And then they sent me to Lady Cantrip!’

‘Was that very bad?’

’I do believe that if I were a young woman with a well-ordered mind, I should feel myself very much indebted to Lady Cantrip.  She had a terrible task of it.  But I could not teach myself to like her.  I believe she knew all through that I should get my way at last.’

‘That ought to have made you friends.’

’But yet she tried everything she could.  And when I told her about that meeting up at Lord Grex’s, she was so shocked!  Do you remember that?’

‘Do I remember it!’

‘Were you not shocked?’ This question was not to be answered by any word.  ‘I was,’ she continued.  ’It was an awful thing to do; but I was determined to show them all that I was in earnest.  Do you remember how Miss Cassewary looked?’

‘Miss Cassewary knew all about it.’

’I daresay she did.  And so I suppose did Mabel Grex.  I had thought that perhaps I might make Mabel a confidante, but—­’