“I may go up-stairs,—­to my own room?”

“Certainly; do;—­go up and smooth your hair.  I will tell him that you are coming to him.  He will wait.  But he is so much in earnest now,—­and so sad,—­that I know he will not come again.”

Then Mary went up-stairs, determined to think of it.  She began at once, woman-like, to smooth her hair as her stepmother had recommended, and to remove the dust of the road from her face and dress.  But not the less was she thinking of it the while.  Could she do it, how much pain would be spared even to herself!  How much that was now bitter as gall in her mouth would become,—­not sweet,—­but tasteless.  There are times in one’s life in which the absence of all savour seems to be sufficient for life in this world.  Were she to do this thing she thought that she would have strength to banish that other man from her mind,—­and at last from her heart.  He would be there, close to her, but of a different kind and leading a different life.  Mrs. Masters had told her that Larry would be as good a squire as the best of them; but it should be her care to keep him and herself in their proper position, to teach him the vanity of such aspirations.  And the real squire opposite, who would despise her,—­for had he not told her that she would be despicable if she married this man,—­would not trouble her then.  They might meet on the roads, and there would be a cold question or two as to each other’s welfare, and a vain shaking of hands,—­but they would know nothing and care for nothing as to each other’s thoughts.  And there would come some stately dame who hearing how things had been many years ago, would perhaps—.  But no;—­the stately dame should be received with courtesy, but there should be no patronising.  Even in these few minutes up-stairs she thought much of the stately dame and was quite sure that she would endure no patronage from Bragton.

She almost thought that she could do it.  There were hideous ideas afflicting her soul dreadfully, but which she strove to banish.  Of course she could not love him,—­not at first.  But all those who wished her to marry him, including himself, knew that;—­and still they wished her to marry him.  How could that be disgraceful which all her friends desired?  Her father, to whom she was, as she knew well, the very apple of his eye, wished her to marry this man;—­and yet her father knew that her heart was elsewhere.  Had not women done it by hundreds, by thousands, and had afterwards performed their duties well as mothers and wives.  In other countries, as she had read, girls took the husbands found for them by their parents as a matter of course.  As she left the room, and slowly crept down-stairs, she almost thought she would do it.  She almost thought;—­but yet, when her hand was on the lock, she could not bring herself to say that it should be so.