He might have guessed that she understood something by the sudden way in which she curtailed her grandmother’s rapturous and affectionate inquiries about the wedding, ran upstairs on the plea of taking off her bonnet, and appeared no more till he had gone home; when, coming down, she found granny, with tearful eyes, lamenting that Mr. Ponsonby was so harsh and unkind, and fully possessed with the rational view which her nephew had been impressing on her.

‘Ha!’ said Clara, ’that is what Louis meant.  I’ll tell you what, granny, Lord Ormersfield never knew in his life what was right, half as well as Louis does.  I wish he would let him alone.  If Mary is good enough for him, she will go out and wait till her father comes round.  If she is not, she won’t; and Lord Ormersfield has no business to tease her.’

‘Then you would like her to go out?’ said Mrs. Frost.

’I like anything that makes Louis happy.  I thought it would have been delightful to have him married—­one could be so much more at Ormersfield, and Mary would be so nice; but as to their being over-persuaded, and thinking themselves half wrong! why, they would never be happy in their lives; and Louis would be always half-asleep or half mad, to save himself the trouble of thinking.  But he’ll never do it!’

On the Saturday morning Mary’s healthy and vigorous spirit had quite resumed its tone.  The worst was over when she had inflicted the stroke on Louis, and seen him ready to support instead of adding to her distress.  He found her pale and sorrowful, but calm, collected, and ready for exertion.  By tacit consent, they avoided all discussion of the terms on which they were to stand.  Greatly touched by her consideration for him on the wedding-day, he would not torture her with pleadings, and was only too grateful for every service that he was allowed to render her without protest, as still her chief and most natural dependence.

She did not scruple to allow him to assist her; she understood the gratification to him, and it was only too sweet to her to be still his object.  She could trust him not to presume, his approval made her almost happy; and yet it was hard that his very patience and acquiescence should endear him so much as to render the parting so much the more painful.  The day was spent in business.  He facilitated much that would have been arduous for two solitary women, and did little all day but go about for Mary, fulfilling the commissions which her father had sent home; and though he did it with a sore heart, it was still a privilege to be at work for Mary.

Rigid as Miss Ponsonby was, she began to be touched.  There was a doubt as to his admission when he came on Sunday morning—­’Mistress saw no one on Sunday,’ but when his name was carried in, Miss Ponsonby could not withstand Mary’s face.  She took care to tell him her rule; but that, considering the circumstances, she had made an exception in his favour, on the understanding that nothing was to break in upon the observance of the Sabbath.