e thought. Old Mr
Bateson and the governess, Mr Everbeery and his cook's diluted blood,
and ways paved for revolutions, all presented themselves to Augusta's
mind when she found her brother walking with no other company than
Mary Thorne, and walking with her, too, in much too close proximity.

How he had contrived to be off with the old love and so soon on with
the new, or rather, to be off with the new love and again on with the
old, we will not stop to inquire. Had Lady Arabella, in truth, known
all her son's doings in this way, could she have guessed how very
nigh he had approached the iniquity of old Mr Bateson, and to the
folly of young Mr Everbeery, she would in truth have been in a hurry
to send him off to Courcy Castle and Miss Dunstable. Some days
before the commencement of our story, young Frank had sworn in sober
earnest--in what he intended for his most sober earnest, his most
earnest sobriety--that he loved Mary Thorne with a love for which
words could find no sufficient expression--with a love that could
never die, never grow dim, never become less, which no opposition on
the part of others could extinguish, which no opposition on her part
could repel; that he might, could, would, and should have her for his
wife, and that if she told him she didn't love him, he would--

"Oh, oh! Mary; do you love me? Don't you love me? Won't you love me?
Say you will. Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? won't you? do you?
don't you? Come now, you have a right to give a fellow an answer."

With such eloquence had the heir of Greshamsbury, when not yet
twenty-one years of age, attempted to possess himself of the
affections of the doctor's niece. And yet three days afterwards he
was quite ready to flirt with Miss Oriel.

If such things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the
dry?

And what had Mary said when these fervent protestations of an undying
love had been thrown at her feet? Mary, it must be remembered, was
very nearly of the same age as Frank; but, as I and others have so
often said before, "Women grow on the sunny side of the wall." Though
Frank was only a boy, it behoved Mary to be something more than a
girl. Frank might be allowed, without laying himself open to much
just reproach, to throw all of what he believed to be his heart into
a protestation of what he believed to be love; but Mary was in duty
bound to be more thoughtful, more reticent, more aware of the facts
of their position, more care