"Against! no, not against anybody. But will you tell Mary that she has your consent?"

"I think she knows that."

"But you have never said anything to her."

"Look here, Frank; you ask me for my advice, and I will give it you: go home; though, indeed, I would rather you went anywhere else."

"No, I must go home; and I must see her."

"Very well, go home: as for seeing Mary, I think you had better put it off for a fortnight."

"Quite impossible."

"Well, that's my advice. But, at any rate, make up your mind to nothing for a fortnight. Wait for one fortnight, and I then will tell you plainly--you and her too--what I think you ought to do. At the end of a fortnight come to me, and tell the squire that I will take it as a great kindness if he will come with you. She has suffered, terribly, terribly; and it is necessary that something should be settled. But a fortnight more can make no great difference."

"And the letter?"

"Oh! there's the letter."

"But what shall I say? Of course I shall write to-night."

"Tell her to wait a fortnight. And, Frank, mind you bring your father with you."

Frank could draw nothing further from his friend save constant repet.i.tions of this charge to him to wait a fortnight,--just one other fortnight.

"Well, I will come to you at any rate," said Frank; "and, if possible, I will bring my father. But I shall write to Mary to-night."

On the Sat.u.r.day morning, Mary, who was then nearly broken-hearted at her lover's silence, received a short note:--

MY OWN MARY,

I shall be home to-morrow. I will by no means release you from your promise. Of course you will perceive that I only got your letter to-day.

Your own dearest,

FRANK.

P.S.--You will have to call me so hundreds and hundreds of times yet.

Short as it was, this sufficed Mary. It is one thing for a young lady to make prudent, heart-breaking suggestions, but quite another to have them accepted. She did call him dearest Frank, even on that one day, almost as often as he had desired her.

CHAPTER XLVI

Our Pet Fox Finds a Tail

Frank returned home, and his immediate business was of course with his father, and with Mr Gazebee, who was still at Greshamsbury.

"But who is the heir?" asked Mr Gazebee, when Frank had explained that the death of Sir Louis rendered unnecessary any immediate legal steps.

"Upon my word I don't know," said Frank.

"You saw Dr Thorne," said the squire. "He must have known."

"I never thought of asking him," said Frank, navely.

Mr Gazebee looked rather solemn. "I wonder at that," said he; "for everything now depends on the hands the property will go into. Let me see; I think Sir Roger had a married sister. Was not that so, Mr Gresham?" And then it occurred for the first time, both to the squire and to his son, that Mary Thorne was the eldest child of this sister.

But it never occurred to either of them that Mary could be the baronet's heir.

Dr Thorne came down for a couple of days before the fortnight was over to see his patients, and then returned again to London. But during this short visit he was utterly dumb on the subject of the heir. He called at Greshamsbury to see Lady Arabella, and was even questioned by the squire on the subject. But he obstinately refused to say more than that nothing certain could be known for yet a few days.

Immediately after his return, Frank saw Mary, and told her all that had happened. "I cannot understand my uncle," said she, almost trembling as she stood close to him in her own drawing-room. "He usually hates mysteries, and yet now he is so mysterious. He told me, Frank--that was after I had written that unfortunate letter--"

"Unfortunate, indeed! I wonder what you really thought of me when you were writing it?"

"If you had heard what your mother said, you would not be surprised.

But, after that, uncle said--"

"Said what?"

"He seemed to think--I don't remember what it was he said. But he said, he hoped that things might yet turn out well; and then I was almost sorry that I had written the letter."

"Of course you were sorry, and so you ought to have been. To say that you would never call me Frank again!"

"I didn't exactly say that."

"I have told him I will wait a fortnight, and so I will. After that, I shall take the matter into my own hands."

It may be well supposed that Lady Arabella was not well pleased to learn that Frank and Mary had been again together; and, in the agony of her spirit, she did say some ill-natured things before Augusta, who had now returned from Courcy Castle, as to the gross impropriety of Mary's conduct. But to Frank she said nothing.

Nor was there much said between Frank and Beatrice. If everything could really be settled at the end of that fortnight which was to witness the disclosure of the doctor's mystery, there would still be time to arrange that Mary should be at the wedding. "It shall be settled then," he said to himself; "and if it be settled, my mother will hardly venture to exclude my affianced bride from the house."

It was now the beginning of August, and it wanted yet a month to the Oriel wedding.

But though he said nothing to his mother or to Beatrice, he did say much to his father. In the first place, he showed him Mary's letter.

"If your heart be not made of stone it will be softened by that," he said. Mr Gresham's heart was not of stone, and he did acknowledge that the letter was a very sweet letter. But we know how the drop of water hollows stone. It was not by the violence of his appeal that Frank succeeded in obtaining from his father a sort of half-consent that he would no longer oppose the match; but by the a.s.siduity with which the appeal was repeated. Frank, as we have said, had more stubbornness of will than his father; and so, before the fortnight was over, the squire had been talked over, and promised to attend at the doctor's bidding.

"I suppose you had better take the Hazlehurst farm," said he to his son, with a sigh. "It joins the park and the home-fields, and I will give you up them also. G.o.d knows, I don't care about farming any more--or about anything else either."

"Don't say that, father."

"Well, well! But, Frank, where will you live? The old house is big enough for us all. But how would Mary get on with your mother?"

At the end of his fortnight, true to his time, the doctor returned to the village. He was a bad correspondent; and though he had written some short notes to Mary, he had said no word to her about his business. It was late in the evening when he got home, and it was understood by Frank and the squire that they were to be with him on the following morning. Not a word had been said to Lady Arabella on the subject.