Mrs. de Burgh shrugged her shoulders; but as if it was not a subject she wished brought under discussion, she allowed it to drop for the present.
CHAPTER IX.
You first called my woman's feelings forth,
And taught me love, ere I had dreamed love's name—
I loved unconsciously....
At last I learned my heart's deep secret.
L. E. L.
Mrs. de Burgh's expedition the preceding day did not prove without its fruits. For the next few days, several idle young men of the neighbourhood, who had nothing better to do, came dropping in to dine or stay a night or so at Silverton.
Mr. de Burgh received these guests with much courtesy and kindness; though apparently regarding them as the visitors of his wife, he left them almost entirely to her entertainment, and went about his private occupation as usual with a scientific friend of his own, who arrived at this time.
As for Mary, although obliged, considering that this gathering had been formed chiefly on her account, to show her sense of the attention by making herself as agreeable as possible, yet before long she began to feel her exertions in that respect a weariness, rather than a pleasurable excitement; and that her powers were not equal when placed in competition with the light and careless spirits around her. Indeed, so gladly would she hail the intervals which set her at liberty, to read, or think, or dream, free from such demands, that she began to suspect very soon that her thirstings after society would easily be satisfied, and that Mr. Temple need not have been alarmed lest she should be too much ensnared by its fascinations; in short, that she was not so sociably inclined in a general way to the degree for which she had given herself credit.
One morning, Mary made her escape about an hour before luncheon from the gay party by whom, since breakfast, she had been surrounded; and seated herself, with a new book of poetry, at the open window of a room leading into a little garden, the luscious perfume of whose flowers were wafted sweetly upon her senses; shaded by the light drapery of the muslin curtains, the sound of laughing, talking, billiard-balls falling at an undisturbing distance from her ear—