After that, Mary would have had only too much food for thought, had her mother alone filled her mind; had those kisses which had so stirred her being, those clinging arms, and that face which bore the deep imprint of illness, alone burdened her memory. Years afterwards the beat of the music which played in the gardens that evening, while the party within sat at dinner, haunted her; bringing back, as such things will, the scene and her aching heart, the outward glitter and the inward care, the Honourable Bob’s gallantries and her father’s stately figure as he rose and drank wine with her; ay, and the hip, hip, hurrah which shook the glasses when an old Squire, a privileged person, rose, before she could leave, and toasted her. Burdened only with the sacred memories of the afternoon, and the anxiety, the pity, the love which they engendered, she had been far from happy, far from free. But in truth, with all her feeling for her mother, Mary bore about with her a keener and more bitter regret. The dull pain which had troubled her of late when thoughts of Arthur Vaughan would beset her was grown to a pang of shame, almost intolerable. She had told herself a hundred times before this that it was her weakness, her fear of her father, her mean compliance that had led her to give him up—rather than any real belief in his baseness. For she had never, she was sure now, believed in that baseness. But now, now when her mother, whose word it never struck her to doubt, had affirmed his innocence, now that she knew, now since a phrase of that mother’s had brought to her mind every incident of the never-to-be-forgotten coach-drive, the May morning, the sunshine and the budding trees, the birth of love—pain gnawed at her heart. She was sick with misery. For, oh, how vile, how thankless, how poor and small a thing he must think her! He would have given her all, and she had robbed him of all. And then when she had robbed him and he could give her little she had turned her back on him, abandoned him, believed evil of him, heard him insulted, and joined in the outrage! Over that thought, over that memory, she shed many and many a bitter tear. Romance had come to her in her lowliness, and a noble lover, stooping to her; and she had killed the one and denied the other. And now, now there was nothing she could do, nothing she would dare to do. For that she had for a moment believed in his baseness—if she had indeed believed—was not the worst. In that she had been the sport of circumstances; appearances had deceived her, and the phase had been brief. But that she had been weak, that she had been swayed, that she had given him up at a word, that she had shown herself wholly unworthy of him—there was the rub. Now, how happy had she been could she have gone back to Miss Sibson’s, and the dull schoolroom and the old stuff dress and the children’s prattle—and heard his step as he came across the forecourt to the door! XXIII IN THE HOUSE