This was, perhaps, not serviceable for Mary; but it was far from being disagreeable.
The tendency to finding matter for hero-worship in Mary's endurance was much stronger with Beatrice than with Miss Oriel.

Miss Oriel was the elder, and naturally less afflicted with the sentimentation of romance.

She had thrown herself into Mary's arms because she had seen that it was essentially necessary for Mary's comfort that she should do so.

She was anxious to make her friend smile, and to smile with her.

Beatrice was quite as true in her sympathy; but she rather wished that she and Mary might weep in unison, shed mutual tears, and break their hearts together.
Patience had spoken of Frank's love as a misfortune, of his conduct as erroneous, and to be excused only by his youth, and had never appeared to surmise that Mary also might be in love as well as he.
But to Beatrice the affair was a tragic difficulty, admitting of no solution; a Gordian knot, not to be cut; a misery now and for ever.
She would always talk about Frank when she and Mary were alone; and, to speak the truth, Mary did not stop her as she perhaps should have done.