Marion’s visits to Miss Temple, though by reason of her aunt’s unreasonable prejudice, they had to be managed with extreme discretion and not made too frequently, were at this time of great benefit to the girl. The influence of the thoroughly sound and sweet Veronica softened while it strengthened her; and did much to weaken, if not altogether eradicate, a certain root of bitterness, which, not unnaturally, began to show itself in her disposition. She was not given to bosom friendships or confidantes. Though frank and ingenuous, she had, like all strong natures, a great power of reserve. Even to Cissy Archer, the most intimate friend she had ever had, she by no means, as we have seen, thought it necessary to confide all her innermost feelings. Through the circumstances of her life and education, her principle acquaintances, not to say friends, had been of the opposite sex—and to tell the truth she preferred that they should be such—though from no unwomanliness in herself, from no shadow of approach to “fastness,” had she come to like the society of men more than that of women. Rather I think from the very opposite cause—her extreme, though veiled, timidity and self-distrust; which instinctively turned to the larger and more generous nature for encouragement and shelter. It never cost her a moment’s shrinking or hesitation to preside at one of her father’s “gentlemen” dinner parties, where the sight of her bright, interested face and the sound of her sweet, eager voice, were a pleasant refreshment to the brain-weary, overworked men who surrounded the table. Yet in a ball-room, or worse still, in a laughing, chattering party of fashionable girls, Marion, though to outward appearance perfectly at ease—a little graver and quieter perhaps than her companions—at heart was shy and self-conscious to a painful degree.