"I knew she had come to talk about me," said Mollie. "I told Beatrix so." "Well, that is one of the things," said her mother. "Aren't you and Beatrix rather inclined to encourage each other in setting yourself against--against----" "What, against the Vicar, Mother?" "I didn't mean that. But there's Beatrix certainly setting herself against her father's wishes, and----" "Oh, but Mr. Grafton has given way. She came to tell me so. She is not to see M. de Lassigny for six months, but after that they are to be allowed to be engaged." Mrs. Walter was rather taken aback. "Oh!" she said. "Mrs. Mercer didn't know that." "But what has it got to do with Mrs. Mercer, Mother? Or with the Vicar?--because, of course, it is he who has sent her. You know that the Graftons don't like the way in which he tries to direct them in their affairs. I told you that they had told me that. Surely it isn't for him or Mrs. Mercer to interfere in such a thing as B's engagement--and to try to do it through me!" "I don't think they have any idea of interfering, but they do take a great interest in you, Mollie; and, of course, they were everything to you before the Graftons came. I can't wonder that they are a little hurt that you make such a very intimate friend of Beatrix, and that they feel themselves shut out now. At least--that Mrs. Mercer does. I don't think it is so much the Vicar. And you are wrong in thinking that he sent her. She said expressly that she came of her own accord. He didn't even know that she was coming." "Oh!" said Mollie. She had a dim idea that he had had a good deal to do with her coming, all the same, but did not express the doubt, or even examine it. "Mollie dear," said Mrs. Walter, with a sudden change of tone. "Is there anything between you and young Pemberton? I've hoped you would have said something to me. But you know, dear, it _does_ seem a little as if everything were for Beatrix Grafton now." Mollie was stricken to the heart. Her mother's thin anxious face, and the very plainness which sits heavily upon women who are middle-aged and tired, when they are without their poor armour of dress, seemed to her infinitely pathetic. She folded her mother with her warm fresh young body. "Oh, my darling," she said through her tears. "I love you better than anybody in the world. I shall never, never forget what you've done for me and been to me. I've only told you nothing because there's nothing to tell."