"He is a good young man then?"
"Very good;" said Mary with an emphasis.
"And Chowton belongs to him?"
"Oh yes;—it belongs to him."
"Some young men make such ducks and drakes of their property when they get it."
"They say that he's not like that at all. People say that he understands farming very well and that he minds everything himself."
"What an excellent young man! There is no other reason for his coming to your house, Mary?"
Then the sluice-gates were opened and the whole story was told. Sitting there late into the night Mary told it all as well as she knew how,—all of it except in regard to any spark of love which might have fallen upon her in respect of Reginald Morton. Of Reginald Morton in her story of course she did not speak; but all the rest she declared. She did not love the man. She was quite sure of that. Though she thought so well of him there was, she was quite sure, no feeling in her heart akin to love. She had promised to take time because she had thought that she might perhaps be able to bring herself to marry him without loving him,—to marry him because her father wished it, and because her going from home would be a relief to her stepmother and sisters, because it would be well for them all that she should be settled out of the way. But since that she had made up her mind,—she thought that she had quite made up her mind,—that it would be impossible.
"There is nobody else, Mary?" said Lady Ushant putting her hand on to Mary's lap. Mary protested that there was nobody else without any consciousness that she was telling a falsehood. "And you are quite sure that you cannot do it?"
"Do you think that I ought, Lady Ushant?"