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Rh 'Ah! that is the question. I take it for granted that either Frank or Mary has told you that they have engaged themselves to each other.'

'Frank told me so twelve months since.'

'And has not Mary told you?'

'Not exactly that. But, never mind; she has, I believe, no secret from me. Though I have said but little to her, I think I know it all.'

'Well, what then?'

The doctor shook his head and put up his hands. He had nothing to say; no proposition to make; no arrangement to suggest. The thing was so, and he seemed to say that, as far as he was concerned, there was an end of it.

The squire sat looking at him, hardly knowing how to proceed. It seemed to him, that the fact of a young man and a young lady being in love with each other was not a thing to be left to arrange itself, particularly, seeing the rank of life in which they were placed. But the doctor seemed to be of a different opinion.

'But, Dr. Thorne, there is no man on God's earth who knows my affairs as well as you do; and in knowing mine, you know Frank's. Do you think it possible that they should marry each other?'

'Possible; yes, it is possible. You mean, will it be prudent?'

'Well, take it in that way; would it not be most imprudent?'

'At present, it certainly would be. I have never spoken to either of them on the subject; but I presume they do not think of such a thing for the present.'

'But, doctor—' The squire was certainly taken aback by the coolness of the doctor's manner. After all, he, the squire, was Mr. Gresham of Greshamsbury, generally acknowledged to be the first commoner in Barsetshire; after all, Frank was his heir, and, in process of time, he would be Mr. Gresham of Greshamsbury. Crippled as the estate was, there would be something left, and the rank at any rate remained. But as to Mary, she was not even the doctor's daughter. She was not only penniless, but nameless, fatherless, worse than motherless! It was incredible that Dr. Thorne, with his generally exalted ideas as to family, should speak in this cold way as to a projected marriage between the heir of Greshamsbury and his brother's bastard child!

'But, doctor,' repeated the squire.

The doctor put one leg over the other, and began to rub his calf. 'Squire,' said he, 'I think I know all that you would say, all that you mean. And you don't like to say it, because you would not wish to pain me by alluding to Mary's birth.'