together without him. The acquaintance and sympathy between them, which
had been slowly growing up during their year of travel, froze to death
now that he was there; and Mary, at eighteen, found herself completely
isolated.

It did not occur to her father that she ought to go into society, or
that she needed a chaperone. Society had lost all its charms for him;
and he intended to marry his daughter early, and so give her the best of
protection. Neither did it seem necessary to him that she should be
consulted in any way about her marriage. However insubordinate she might
as a child have been to others, to him, whenever they were brought into
direct contact, she had always been perfectly submissive, and he
expected her to continue so. To such a length had his confidence in the
success of his plans gone, that he had never in any way hinted them to
his daughter--the thing was settled, and had become a part of the course
of nature, in no way requiring to be discussed. Under these
circumstances, Mary spent two years of grown-up life at home. They were
very wearisome and depressing years, partly from her position, partly
from her strong, and always growing, dislike to the cousin, who was so
much more to her father than she was. She saw very few people; now and
then she went with her father to a dinner-party where most of the guests
were "grave and reverend seigniors" like himself; now and then to a
dance, where people were civil to her, and where some stranger in the
neighbourhood would occasionally show signs of incipient admiration,
pleasantly exciting to a girl in her teens. And now and then she had to
receive visitors at home, feeling constrained and annoyed while she did
so, by the invariable presence of George. There were neighbours who
would gladly have been good to her. It was common for mothers to say to
each other, "Poor Mary Wynter! I should like to ask here more, but I
really dare not, Mr. Wynter is _so_ odd,"--and Mary had even a certain
consciousness of this goodwill and its suppression; but there were other
sayings, common as household words, among these same people, of which
she had no suspicion. It would, perhaps, have changed the whole story
of her life, if she had known that the reason why she lived as much
apart from the whole region of lovemaking or flirtation as if she had
been a staid matron of fifty, was, the general belief that she was
engaged, and before long to be married to the one man in the worl