could wish unsaid.

What Louis did not see, was that the very force of her own affection
was what alarmed Mary, and caused her reserve. To a mind used to
balance and regulation, any sensation so mighty and engrossing appeared
wrong; and repressed as her attachment had been, it was the more
absorbing now that he was all that was left to her. Admiration,
honour, gratitude, old childish affection, and caressing elder-sisterly
protection, all flowed in one deep, strong current; but the very depth
made her diffident. She could imagine the whole reciprocated, and she
feared to be importunate. If the day was no better than a weary
turmoil, save when his voice was in her ear, his eyes wistfully bent on
her, the more carefully did she restrain all expression of hope of
seeing him to-morrow, lest she should be exacting and detain him from
projects of his own. If it was pride and delight to her to watch his
graceful, agile figure spring on horseback, she would keep herself from
the window, lest he should feel oppressed by her pursuing him; and when
she found her advice sought after as his law, she did not venture to
proffer it. She was uncomfortable in finding the rule committed to
her, and all the more because Lord Ormersfield, who had learnt to talk
to her so openly that she sometimes thought he confounded her with her
mother, used in all his schemes to appear to take it for granted that
she should share with him in the managing, consulting headship of the
house, leaving Louis as something to be cared for and petted like a
child, without a voice in their decisions. These conversations used to
make her almost jealous on Louis's account, and painfully recall some
of her mother's apprehensions.

That was the real secret source of all her discomfort--namely, the
misgiving lest she had been too ready to follow the dictates of her own
heart. Would her mother have been satisfied? Had not her fondness and
her desolation prevailed, where, for Louis's own sake, she should have
held back! Every time she felt herself the elder in heart, every time
she feared to have disappointed him, every time she saw that his
liveliness was repressed by her mournfulness, she feared that she was
letting him sacrifice himself. And still more did she question her
conduct towards her father. She had only gradually become aware of the
extent of the mutual aversion between him and the Earl; and Miss
Ponsonby's reproaches awakened her to the fear th