, and a great many other ladies
and gentlemen who reckoned him among their acquaintance, were not
accurately acquainted with his transactions with Messrs. Neefit,
Moggs, and Horsball; nor were they thoroughly acquainted with the
easy nature of our hero's changing convictions. To Clarissa he
certainly was heroic; to Patience he was very dear; to old Mrs.
Brownlow he was almost a demigod; to Mr. Poojean he was an object
of envy. To Mary Bonner, as she first saw him, he was infinitely
more fascinating than the captains and lieutenants of West Indian
regiments, or than Colonial secretaries generally.

It was during that evening at Mrs. Brownlow's that Mary Bonner
resolutely made up her mind that she would be as stiff and cold to
Ralph the heir as the nature of their acquaintance would allow. She
had seen Clarissa without watching, and, without thinking, she had
resolved. Mr. Newton was handsome, well to do, of good address, and
clever;--he was also attractive; but he should not be attractive for
her. She would not, as her first episode in her English life, rob
a cousin of a lover. And so her mind was made up, and no word was
spoken to any one. She had no confidences. There was no one in whom
she could confide. Indeed, there was no need for confidence. As
she left Mrs. Brownlow's house on that evening she slipped her arm
through that of Patience, and the happy Clarissa was left to walk
home with Ralph the heir,--as the reader may perhaps remember.

Then that other Ralph had come, and she learned in half-pronounced
ambiguous whispers what was the nature of his position in the world.
She did not know,--at that time her cousins did not know,--how nearly
successful were the efforts made to dispossess the heir of his
inheritance in order that this other Newton might possess it. But she
saw, or thought that she saw, that this was the gallanter man of the
two. Then he came again, and then again, and she knew that her own
beauty was of avail. She encouraged him not at all. It was not in her
nature to give encouragement to a man's advances. It may, perhaps, be
said of her that she had no power to do so. What was in her of the
graciousness of feminine love, of the leaning, clinging, flattering
softness of woman's nature, required some effort to extract, and had
never hitherto been extracted. But within her own bosom she told
herself that she thought that she could give it, if the asking for it
were duly done. Then came the first tid