she should dare to cast an
imputation on my darling."

"On me, uncle? She casts no imputation on me. Frank has been foolish:
I have said nothing of it, for it was not worth while to trouble you.
But as Lady Arabella chooses to interfere, I have no right to blame
her. He has said what he should not have said; he has been foolish.
Uncle, you know I could not prevent it."

"Let her send him away then, not you; let her banish him."

"Uncle, he is her son. A mother can hardly send her son away so
easily: could you send me away, uncle?"

He merely answered her by twining his arm round her waist and
pressing her to his side. He was well sure that she was badly
treated; and yet now that she so unaccountably took Lady Arabella's
part, he hardly knew how to make this out plainly to be the case.

"Besides, uncle, Greshamsbury is in a manner his own; how can he be
banished from his father's house? No, uncle; there is an end of my
visits there. They shall find that I will not thrust myself in their
way."

And then Mary, with a calm brow and steady gait, went in and made the
tea.

And what might be the feelings of her heart when she so sententiously
told her uncle that Frank had been foolish? She was of the same age
with him; as impressionable, though more powerful in hiding such
impressions,--as all women should be; her heart was as warm, her
blood as full of life, her innate desire for the companionship of
some much-loved object as strong as his. Frank had been foolish in
avowing his passion. No such folly as that could be laid at her door.
But had she been proof against the other folly? Had she been able to
walk heart-whole by his side, while he chatted his commonplaces about
love? Yes, they are commonplaces when we read of them in novels;
common enough, too, to some of us when we write them; but they are by
no means commonplace when first heard by a young girl in the rich,
balmy fragrance of a July evening stroll.

Nor are they commonplaces when so uttered for the first or second
time at least, or perhaps the third. 'Tis a pity that so heavenly a
pleasure should pall upon the senses.

If it was so that Frank's folly had been listened to with a certain
amount of pleasure, Mary did not even admit so much to herself. But
why should it have been otherwise? Why should she have been less
prone to love than he was? Had he not everything which girls do love?
which girls should love? which God created noble, beautiful, all bu