fore as
to the atrocity of the Greshamsbury church pews, and was observed to
take some opportunities of conversing alone with Beatrice. Beatrice
had always denied the imputation--this had usually been made by Mary
in their happy days--with vehement asseverations of anger; and Miss
Gushing had tittered, and expressed herself as supposing that great
people's daughters might be as barefaced as they pleased.

All this had happened previous to the great Greshamsbury feud. Mr
Oriel gradually got himself into a way of sauntering up to the great
house, sauntering into the drawing-room for the purpose, as I am sure
he thought, of talking to Lady Arabella, and then of sauntering home
again, having usually found an opportunity for saying a few words to
Beatrice during the visit. This went on all through the feud up to
the period of Lady Arabella's illness; and then one morning, about
a month before the date fixed for Frank's return, Mr Oriel found
himself engaged to Miss Beatrice Gresham.

From the day that Miss Gushing heard of it--which was not however
for some considerable time after this--she became an Independent
Methodist. She could no longer, she said at first, have any faith in
any religion; and for an hour or so she was almost tempted to swear
that she could no longer have any faith in any man. She had nearly
completed a worked cover for a credence-table when the news reached
her, as to which, in the young enthusiasm of her heart, she had not
been able to remain silent; it had already been promised to Mr Oriel;
that promise she swore should not be kept. He was an apostate, she
said, from his principles; an utter pervert; a false, designing man,
with whom she would never have trusted herself alone on dark mornings
had she known that he had such grovelling, worldly inclinations. So
Miss Gushing became an Independent Methodist; the credence-table
covering was cut up into slippers for the preacher's feet; and the
young thing herself, more happy in this direction than she had been
in the other, became the arbiter of that preacher's domestic
happiness.

But this little history of Miss Gushing's future life is premature.
Mr Oriel became engaged demurely, nay, almost silently, to Beatrice,
and no one out of their own immediate families was at the time
informed of the matter. It was arranged very differently from those
two other matches--embryo, or not embryo, those, namely, of Augusta
with Mr Moffat, and Frank with Mary Thorn