the greatest
earnestness.

This was said when Mary was actually standing before her. To hear the
words, and to feel their application, was a flash of lightning; and for
a moment she felt as if her brain were on fire. She was alive but to one
idea, and that the most painful that could be suggested to a delicate
mind. She had heard herself recommended to the love of a man who was
indifferent to her. Could there be such a humiliation--such a
degradation? Colonel Lennox's embarrassment was scarcely less; but his
mother saw not the mischief she had done, and she continued to speak
without his having the power to interrupt her. But her words fell
unheeded on Mary's ear--she could hear nothing but what she had already
heard. Colonel Lennox rose and respectfully placed a chair for her, but
the action was unnoticed--she saw only herself a suppliant for his love;
and, insensible to everything but her own feelings, she turned and
hastily quitted the room without uttering a syllable. To fly from Rose
Hall, never again to enter it, was her first resolution; yet how was she
to do so without coming to an explanation, worse even than the cause
itself: for she had that very morning yielded to the solicitations of
Mrs. Lennox, and consented to remain till the following day.

"Oh!" thought she, as the scalding tears of shame for the first time
dropped from her eyes, "what a situation am I placed in! To continue
to live under the same roof with the man whom I have heard solicited to
love me; and how mean--how despicable must I appear in his eyes--thus
offered--rejected! How shall I ever be able to convince him that I
care not for his love--that I wished it not--that I would, refuse, scorn
it to-morrow were it offered to me. Oh! could I but tell him so; but he
must ever remain, stranger to my real sentiments--he might reject--but
_I_ cannot disavow! And yet to have him think that I have all this while
been laying snares for him--that all this parade of my acquirements was
for the purpose of gaining his affections! Oh how blind and stupid I was
not to see through the injudicious praises of Mrs. Lennox! I should not
then have suffered this degradation in the eyes of her son!"

Hours passed away unheeded by Mary, while she was giving way to the
wounded sensibility of a naturally high spirit and acute feelings, thus
violently excited in all their first ardour. At length she was recalled
to herself by hearing the sound of a carriage, as it pa