If she had known it then, she might, perhaps, have found a substitute for her cousin among her own equals and countrymen, but her entire unconsciousness, which they could not suspect, so deceived every possible lover as to make them believe her utterly out of their reach.
The only real enjoyment which brightened these dull years, came to Mary when she visited an old school-friend.

There were two or three with whom she had kept up affectionate intercourse; and one, especially, whose house was her refuge whenever she could get permission to spend a week away from home.

This girl had married at the very time of Mary's leaving school--she lived much in the world, and would have carried Mary into the whirl of dissipation if Mr.Wynter had allowed it.

But he had restricted his daughter's visits to those times of the year when Helen Churchill and her husband were in the country, fatigued and glad of a few weeks of quiet; there Mary went to them, and found their quiet livelier than the liveliest of her home-life.
But in the spring of her twenty-first year, leave, often refused, was granted, and she joined the Churchills in London.

The first week passed in a delightful confusion--whether her new dresses, or her unaccustomed liberty, or the opera, or the park, or the companionship of Helen, or the absence of George, were the most delightful, she would have been puzzled to say.