"A girl circumstanced like my niece! How utterly incapable is such a woman as that to understand the mind, and heart, and soul of such a one as Mary Thorne!" And then his thoughts recurred to Frank.

"It has been ill done of him; ill done of him: young as he is, he should have had feeling enough to have spared me this.

A thoughtless word has been spoken which will now make her miserable!" And then, as he walked on, he could not divest his mind of the remembrance of what had passed between him and Sir Roger.
What, if after all, Mary should become the heiress to all that money?
What, if she should become, in fact, the owner of Greshamsbury?
for, indeed it seemed too possible that Sir Roger's heir would be the owner of Greshamsbury.
The idea was one which he disliked to entertain, but it would recur to him again and again.

It might be, that a marriage between his niece and the nominal heir to the estate might be of all the matches the best for young Gresham to make.

How sweet would be the revenge, how glorious the retaliation on Lady Arabella, if, after what had now been said, it should come to pass that all the difficulties of Greshamsbury should be made smooth by Mary's love, and Mary's hand! It was a dangerous subject on which to ponder; and, as he sauntered down the road, the doctor did his best to banish it from his mind,--not altogether successfully.
But as he went he again encountered Beatrice.