And then what was still a tottering situation was kept on its legs by the sweet character and gentle temper of Mary Bartley.
We have already mentioned that she was superior to most women in the habit of close attention to whatever she undertook. This was the real key to her facility in languages, history, music, drawing, and calisthenics, as her professor called female gymnastics. The flexible creature's limbs were in secret steel. She could go thirty feet up a slack rope hand over hand with wonderful ease and grace, and hang by one hand for ten minutes to kiss the other to her friends. So the very day she was surprised into consenting to marry Walter secretly she sat down to the Marriage Service and learned it all by heart directly, and understood most of it.
By this means she realized that now she had another man to obey as well as her father. So now, when Walter pressed her for secret meetings, she said, submissively, "Oh yes, if you insist." She even remarked that she concluded clandestine meetings were the natural consequence of a clandestine marriage.
She used to meet her husband in the day when she could, and often for five minutes under the moon. And she even promised to spend two or three days with him at the lakes if a safe opportunity should occur. But for that she stipulated that Mr. Hope must be absent.
Walter asked her why she was more afraid of Mr. Hope than of her father.
Her eyes seemed to look inward dimly, and at first she said she didn't know. But after pondering the matter a little she said, "Because he watches me more closely than papa, and that is because—You won't tell anybody?"
"No."
"Not a soul, upon your honor?"
"Not a soul, dearest, upon my honor."
"Well, then, because he loves me more."