"What a fool! what an idiot! what an empty-headed cowardly fool I am!" said she, springing up from the bench on her feet.
As she did so, she heard voices close to her, at the little gate.
They were those of her uncle and Frank Gresham.
"God bless you, Frank!" said the doctor, as he passed out of the grounds.

"You will excuse a lecture, won't you, from so old a friend ?--though you are a man now, and discreet, of course, by Act of Parliament." "Indeed I will, doctor," said Frank.

"I will excuse a longer lecture than that from you." "At any rate it won't be to-night," said the doctor, as he disappeared.

"And if you see Mary, tell her that I am obliged to go; and that I will send Janet down to fetch her." Now Janet was the doctor's ancient maid-servant.
Mary could not move on without being perceived; she therefore stood still till she heard the click of the door, and then began walking rapidly back to the house by the path which had brought her thither.
The moment, however, that she did so, she found that she was followed; and in a very few moments Frank was alongside of her.
"Oh, Mary!" said he, calling to her, but not loudly, before he quite overtook her, "how odd that I should come across you just when I have a message for you! and why are you all alone ?" Mary's first impulse was to reiterate her command to him to call her no more by her Christian name; but her second impulse told her that such an injunction at the present moment would not be prudent on her part.

The traces of her tears were still there; and she well knew that a very little, the slightest show of tenderness on his part, the slightest effort on her own to appear indifferent, would bring down more than one other such intruder.