Chapter XIII.
MARY GREY'S MANEUVER.
She'd tried this world in all its changes,
States and conditions; had been loved and happy.
Scorned and wretched, and passed through all its stages;
And now, believe me, she who knew it best,
Thought it not worth the bustle that it cost.
—Madden.
Mary Grey now set systematically to work. Partly from love or its base counterfeit, partly from hate, but mostly from vanity, she determined to devote every faculty of mind and body to one set object—to win Alden Lytton's love back again and to subjugate him to her will.
To all outward seeming she led a most blameless and beneficent life.
She lived with the bishop's widow, and made herself very useful and agreeable to the staid lady, who refused to take any money for her board.
And although the house was full of students, who boarded and lodged and spent their evenings there, with the most wonderful self-government she forebore "to make eyes" at any of them.
She now no longer said in so many words that "her heart was buried in the grave," and so forth; but she quietly acted as if it was.