added fuel to the fire of his love, more perhaps than even her presence might have done. For the flight of the quarry ever adds eagerness to the pursuit of the huntsman. Lady Arabella, moreover, had a bitter enemy; a foe, utterly opposed to her side in the contest, where she had once fondly looked for her stanchest ally. Frank was now in the habit of corresponding with Miss Dunstable, and received from her most energetic admonitions to be true to the love which he had sworn. True to it he resolved to be; and therefore, when he found that Mary was flown, he resolved to fly after her.
He did not, however, do this till he had been in a measure provoked to it by the sharp-tongued cautions and blunted irony of his mother. It was not enough for her that she had banished Mary out of the parish, and made Dr. Thorne's life miserable; not enough that she harassed her husband with harangues on the constant subject of Frank's marrying money, and dismayed Beatrice with invectives against the iniquity of her friend. The snake was so but scotched; to kill it outright she must induce Frank utterly to renounce Miss Thorne.
This task she essayed, but not exactly with success. 'Well, mother,' said Frank at last, turning very red, partly with shame, and partly with indignation, as he made the frank avowal, 'since you will press me about it, I tell you fairly that my mind is made up to marry Mary sooner or later, if—'
'Oh, Frank! good heavens! you wicked boy; you are saying this purposely to drive me distracted.'
'If,' continued Frank, not attending to his mother's interjections, 'if she will consent.'
'Consent!' said Lady Arabella. 'Oh, heavens!' and falling into the corner of the sofa, she buried her face in her handkerchief.
'Yes, mother, if she will consent. And now that I have told you so much, it is only just that I should tell you this also; that as far as I can see at present I have no reason to hope that she will do so.'
'Oh, Frank, the girl is doing all she can to catch you!' said Lady Arabella,—not prudently.
'No, mother; there you wrong her altogether; wrong her most cruelly.'
'You ungracious, wicked boy! you call me cruel!'
'I don't call you cruel; but you do wrong her cruelly, most cruelly. When I have spoken to her about this—for I have spoken to her—she has behaved exactly as you would have wished her to do; but not at all as I wished her. She has given me no encouragement. You have turned her out among you'—
