"No; I have only been telling her that she must give up receiving
George Hawker here. And she seems to have taken a sort of fancy to his
society, which might have grown to something more serious. So I am glad
I spoke in time."

"My dear brother, do you think you have spoken in time? I have always
imagined that you had determined, for some reason which I was not
master of, that she should look on Mr. Hawker as her future husband. I
am afraid you will have trouble. Mary is selfwilled."

Mary was very self-willed. She refused to come down-stairs all day,
and, when he was sitting down to dinner, he sent up for her. She sent
him for an answer, that she did not want any dinner, and that she was
going to stay where she was.

The Vicar ate his dinner notwithstanding. He was vexed, but, on the
whole, felt satisfied with himself. This sort of thing, he said to
himself, was to be expected. She would get over it in time. He hoped
that the poor girl would not neglect her meals, and get thin. He might
have made himself comfortable if he had seen her at the cold chicken in
the back kitchen.

She could not quite make the matter out. She rather fancied that her
father and Hawker had had some quarrel, the effects of which would wear
off, and that all would come back to its old course. She thought it
strange too that her father should be so different from his usual self,
and this made her uneasy. One thing she was determined on, not to give
up her lover, come what would. So far in life she had always had her
own way, and she would have it now. All things considered, she thought
that sulks would be her game. So sulks it was. To be carried on until
the Vicar relented.

She sat up in her room till it was evening. Twice during the day her
aunt had come up, and the first time she had got rid of her under
pretence of headache, but the second time she was forced in decency to
admit her, and listen entirely unedified to a long discourse, proving,
beyond power of contradiction, that it was the duty of every young
Englishwoman to be guided entirely by her parents in the choice of a
partner for life. And how that Lady Kate, as a fearful judgment on her
for marrying a captain of artillery against the wishes of her noble
relatives, was now expiating her crimes on 400L. a-year, and when she
might have married a duke.

Lady Kate was Miss Thornton's "awful example," her "naughty girl." She
served to point many a moral of the old lady's. But Lady F