room, 'I'm not going to bear this any longer; I'm going to Boxall Hill.'
'Oh, Frank! how can you be so imprudent?'
'You, at any rate, have some decent feeling for Mary. I believe you have some regard for her; and therefore I tell you. Will you send her any message?'
'Oh, yes; my best, best love; that is if you will see her; but, Frank, you are very foolish, very; and she will be infinitely distressed.'
'Do not mention this, that is, not at present; not that I mean to make any secret of it. I shall tell my father everything. I'm off now!' and then, paying no attention to her remonstrance, he turned down the stairs and was soon on horseback.
He took the road to Boxall Hill, but he did not ride very fast: he did not go jauntily as a jolly, thriving wooer; but musingly, and often with diffidence, meditating every now and then whether it would not be better for him to turn back: to turn back—but not from fear of his mother; not from prudential motives; not because that often-repeated lesson as to marrying money was beginning to take effect; not from such causes as these; but because he doubted how he might be received by Mary.
He did, it is true, think something about his worldly prospects. He had talked rather grandiloquently to his mother as to his hating money, and hating the estate. His mother's never-ceasing worldly cares on such subjects perhaps demanded that a little grandiloquence should be opposed to them. But Frank did not hate the estate; nor did he at all hate the position of an English country gentleman. Miss Dunstable's eloquence, however, rang in his ears. For Miss Dunstable had an eloquence of her own, even in her letters. 'Never let them talk you out of your own true, honest, hearty feelings,' she had said. 'Greshamsbury is a very nice place, I am sure; and I hope I shall see it some day; but all its green knolls are not half so nice, should not be half so precious, as the pulses of your own heart. That is your own estate, your own, your very own—your own and another's; whatever may go to the money-lenders, don't send that there. Don't mortgage that, Mr. Gresham.'
'No,' said Frank, pluckily, as he put his horse into a faster trot, 'I won't mortgage that. They may do what they like with the estate; but my heart's my own,' and so speaking to himself, almost aloud, he turned a corner of the road rapidly and came at once upon the doctor.
'Hallo, doctor! is that you?' said Frank, rather disgusted.
'What! Frank! I hardly expected to meet you here,' said Dr. Thorne, not much better pleased.
