"Would you like to go?"
"How should I not like to go? Lady Ushant is my dearest, dearest friend. It is so very good of her to think of me."
"She talks of the first week in December and wants you to be there for Christmas."
"I don't at all know that I can go, Mr. Morton."
"Why not go?"
"I'm afraid mamma will not spare me." There were many reasons. She could hardly go on such a visit without some renewal of her scanty wardrobe, which perhaps the family funds would not permit. And, as she knew very well, Mrs. Masters was not at all favourable to Lady Ushant. If the old lady had altogether kept Mary it might have been very well; but she had not done so and Mrs. Masters had more than once said that that kind of thing must be all over;—meaning that Mary was to drop her intimacy with high-born people that were of no real use. And then there was Mr. Twentyman and his suit. Mary had for some time felt that her step-mother intended her to understand that her only escape from home would be by becoming Mrs. Twentyman. "I don't think it will be possible, Mr. Morton."
"My aunt will be very sorry."
"Oh,—how sorry shall I be! It is like having another little bit of heaven before me."
Then he said what he certainly should not have said. "I thought, Miss Masters, that your heaven was all here."
"What do you mean by that, Mr. Morton?" she asked blushing up to her hair. Of course she knew what he meant, and of course she was angry with him. Ever since that walk her mind had been troubled by ideas as to what he would think about her, and now he was telling her what he thought.