For he might have been lying dead but for her; and then what would become of the many poor people whose greatest comfort he was said to be?
And what good could arise from his destruction, if cruel people compassed it?
Free trade must be carried on, for the sake of everybody, including Captain Carroway himself; and if an old and ugly man succeeded a young and generous one as leader of the free-trade movement, all the women in the country would put the blame on her.
Looking at these things loftily, and with a strong determination not to think twice of what any one might say who did not understand the subject, Mary was forced at last to the stern conclusion that she must keep her promise.

Not only because it was a promise--although that went a very long way with her--but also because there seemed no other chance of performing a positive duty.

Simple honesty demanded that she should restore to the owner a valuable, and beyond all doubt important, piece of property.

Two hours had she spent in looking for it, and deprived her dear father of his breakfast shrimps; and was all this trouble to be thrown away, and herself, perhaps, accused of theft, because her mother was so short and sharp in wanting to know everything, and to turn it her own way?
The trinket, which she had found at last, seemed to be a very uncommon and precious piece of jewelry; it was made of pure gold, minutely chased and threaded with curious workmanship, in form like a melon, and bearing what seemed to be characters of some foreign language: there might be a spell, or even witchcraft, in it, and the sooner it was out of her keeping the better.

Nevertheless she took very good care of it, wrapping it in lamb's-wool, and peeping at it many times a day, to be sure that it was safe, until it made her think of the owner so much, and the many wonders she had heard about him, that she grew quite angry with herself and it, and locked it away, and then looked at it again.
As luck would have it, on the very day when Mary was to stroll down Bempton Lane (not to meet any one, of course, but simply for the merest chance of what might happen), her father had business at Driffield corn market, which would keep him from home nearly all the day.