ied
or followed her. Mary could hardly have rejected their society, even
had she felt it wise to do so. She would in such case have been all
alone, and her severance from the Greshamsbury house and household,
from the big family in which she had for so many years been almost at
home, would have made such solitude almost unendurable.

And then these two girls both knew--not her secret: she had no
secret--but the little history of her ill-treatment. They knew that
though she had been blameless in this matter, yet she had been the
one to bear the punishment; and, as girls and bosom friends, they
could not but sympathise with her, and endow her with heroic
attributes; make her, in fact, as we are doing, their little heroine
for the nonce. This was, perhaps, not serviceable for Mary; but it
was far from being disagreeable.

The tendency to finding matter for hero-worship in Mary's endurance
was much stronger with Beatrice than with Miss Oriel. Miss Oriel was
the elder, and naturally less afflicted with the sentimentation of
romance. She had thrown herself into Mary's arms because she had
seen that it was essentially necessary for Mary's comfort that she
should do so. She was anxious to make her friend smile, and to smile
with her. Beatrice was quite as true in her sympathy; but she rather
wished that she and Mary might weep in unison, shed mutual tears, and
break their hearts together.

Patience had spoken of Frank's love as a misfortune, of his conduct
as erroneous, and to be excused only by his youth, and had never
appeared to surmise that Mary also might be in love as well as he.
But to Beatrice the affair was a tragic difficulty, admitting of no
solution; a Gordian knot, not to be cut; a misery now and for ever.
She would always talk about Frank when she and Mary were alone; and,
to speak the truth, Mary did not stop her as she perhaps should have
done. As for a marriage between them, that was impossible; Beatrice
was well sure of that: it was Frank's unfortunate destiny that he
must marry money--money, and, as Beatrice sometimes thoughtlessly
added, cutting Mary to the quick,--money and family also. Under such
circumstances a marriage between them was quite impossible; but not
the less did Beatrice declare, that she would have loved Mary as her
sister-in-law had it been possible; and how worthy Frank was of a
girl's love, had such love been permissible.

"It is so cruel," Beatrice would say; "so very, very, cruel.