For the first time in all her strenuous, self-devoted life she would sometimes make much of her physical weakness in these summer days, so as to keep Mary with her, to prevent her from becoming more closely acquainted with Meynell and Meynell's ideas. And in fact this new anxiety interfered with her recovery; she had only to let herself be ill, and ill most genuinely she was. Mary understood it all, and submitted. Her mother's fears were indeed amply justified! Mary's secret mind was becoming absorbed, from a distance, in Meynell's campaign; Meynell's personality, through all hindrance and difficulty--nay, perhaps, because of them--was gradually seizing upon and mastering her own; and processes of thought that, so long as she and her mother were, so to speak, alone in the world together, were still immature and potential, grew apace. The woods and glades of Maudeley, the village street, the field paths, began to be for her places of magic, whence at any moment might spring flowers of joy known to her alone. To see him pass at a distance, to come across him in a miner's cottage, or in Miss Puttenham's drawing-room--these rare occasions were to her the events of the summer weeks. Nevertheless, when September arrived, she had long since forbidden herself to hope for anything more. Meanwhile, Rose Flaxman was the only person who ever ventured to feel and show the irritation of the natural woman toward her sister's idiosyncrasies. "Do for heaven's sake stop her reading these books!" she said impatiently one evening to Mary, when she had taken leave of Catharine, and her niece was strolling back with her toward Maudeley. "What books?" "Why, lives of bishops and deans and that kind of thing! I never come but I find a pile of them beside her. It should be made absolutely illegal to write the life of a clergyman! My dear, your mother would be well in a week if we could only stop it and put her on a course of Gaboriau!" Mary smiled rather sadly. "They seem to be the only things that interest her now." "What, the deans? I know. It's intolerable. She went to speak to the postman just now while I was with her, and I looked at the book she had been reading with her mark in it. I should like to have thrown it into the pond! Some tiresome canon or other writing to a friend about Eternal Punishment. What does he know about it? I should like to ask! I declare I hope he may know something more about it some day! There was your mother as white as her ruffles, with dark lines under her eyes. I tell you clerical intimidation should be made a punishable offence. It's just as bad as any other!"