in spite of Beatrice's coming marriage, were grim-visaged, and dolorous. Mr. Mortimer Gazebee, rejected though he had been, still went and came, talking much to the squire, much also to her ladyship, as to the ill-doings which were in the course of projection by Sir Louis; and Frank went about the house with clouded brow, as though finally resolved to neglect his one great duty.
Poor Beatrice was robbed of half her joy: over and over again her brother asked her whether she had yet seen Mary, and she was obliged as often to answer that she had not. Indeed, she did not dare to visit her friend, for it was hardly possible that they should sympathise with each other. Mary was, to say the least, stubborn in her pride; and Beatrice, though she could forgive her friend for loving her brother, could not forgive the obstinacy with which Mary persisted in a course which, as Beatrice thought, she herself knew to be wrong.
And then Mr. Gazebee came down from town, with an intimation that it behoved the squire himself to go up that he might see certain learned pundits, and be badgered in his own person at various dingy, dismal chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Temple, and Gray's Inn Lane. It was an invitation exactly of that sort which a good many years ago was given to a certain duck.
'Will you, will you—will you, will you—come and be killed?' Although Mr. Gazebee urged the matter with such eloquence, the squire remained steady to his objection, and swam obstinately about his Greshamsbury pond in any direction save that which seemed to lead towards London.
This occurred on the very evening of that Friday which had witnessed Lady Arabella's last visit to Dr. Thorne's house. The question of the squire's necessary journey to the great fountains of justice was, of course, discussed between Lady Arabella and Mr. Gazebee; and it occurred to the former, full as she was of Frank's iniquity and of Mary's obstinacy, that if Frank were sent up in lieu of his father, it would separate them at least for a while. If she could only get Frank away without seeing his love, she might yet so work upon him, by means of the message which Mary had sent, as to postpone, if not break off, this hateful match. It was inconceivable that a youth of twenty-three, and such a youth as Frank, should be obstinately constant to a girl possessed of no great beauty—so argued Lady Arabella to herself—and who had neither wealth, birth, nor fashion to recommend her.
And thus it was at last settled—the squire being a willing party to the agreement—that Frank should go up and be badgered in lieu of his father. At his age it was possible to make it appear a thing desirable, if not necessary—on account of the importance conveyed—to sit day after day in the chambers of
