“He evidently don’t know that Nickem has got round Goarly,” said the landlord.

CHAPTER III

At Cheltenham

The month at Cheltenham was passed very quietly and would have been a very happy month with Mary Masters but that there grew upon her from day to day increasing fears of what she would have to undergo when she returned to Dillsborough.  At the moment when she was hesitating with Larry Twentyman, when she begged him to wait six months and then at last promised to give him an answer at the end of two, she had worked herself up to think that it might possibly be her duty to accept her lover for the sake of her family.  At any rate she had at that moment thought that the question of duty ought to be further considered, and therefore she had vacillated.  When the two months’ delay was accorded to her, and within that period the privilege of a long absence from Dillsborough, she put the trouble aside for a while with the common feeling that the chapter of accidents might do something for her.  Before she had reached Cheltenham the chapter of accidents had done much.  When Reginald Morton told her that he could not have congratulated her on such prospects, and had explained to her why in truth he had been angry at the bridge,—­how he had been anxious to be alone with her that he might learn whether she were really engaged to this man,—­then she had known that her answer to Larry Twentyman at the end of the two months must be a positive refusal.

But as she became aware of this a new trouble arose and harassed her very soul.  When she had asked for the six months she had not at the moment been aware, she had not then felt, that a girl who asks for time is supposed to have already surrendered.  But since she had made that unhappy request the conviction had grown upon her.  She had read it in every word her stepmother said to her and in her father’s manner.  The very winks and hints and little jokes which fell from her younger sisters told her that it was so.  She could see around her the satisfaction which had come from the settlement of that difficult question,—­a satisfaction which was perhaps more apparent with her father than even with the others.  Then she knew what she had done, and remembered to have heard that a girl who expresses a doubt is supposed to have gone beyond doubting.  While she was still at Dillsborough there was a feeling that no evil would arise from this if she could at last make up her mind to be Mrs. Twentyman; but when the settled conviction came upon her, after hearing Reginald Morton’s words, then she was much troubled.

He stayed only a couple of days at Cheltenham and during that time said very little to her.  He certainly spoke no word which would give her a right to think that he himself was attached to her.  He had been interested about her, as was his aunt, Lady Ushant, because she had been known and her mother had been known by the old Mortons.  But there was nothing of love in all that.  She had never supposed that there would be; and yet there was a vague feeling in her bosom that as he had been strong in expressing his objection to Mr. Twentyman there might have been something more to stir him than the memory of those old days at Bragton!